


And the mountains said I could find you here

by elevenhurricanes



Series: we were always an island [2]
Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: An average amount of wilderness peril, F/M, Idaho, Nightmares, Resolved Sexual Tension, Searching for Bigfoot, Slow Burn, Suicidal themes (mentioned), backpacking, ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-29 22:36:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15738714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elevenhurricanes/pseuds/elevenhurricanes
Summary: There's a national forest in Idaho that claims more Bigfoot sightings per acre than any other park in the US. Or, alternatively: how to make a filler episode of a podcast.





	And the mountains said I could find you here

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place after season two.
> 
> And I'll chuck this disclaimer at the top: I've never been to Idaho but I've hiked in Montana and Wyoming, took most of my inspiration from that. I'm a lowly day hiker by choice/funds and the only camping I've done is on an island on a lake for 10+ summers when I was a kid, so forgive me for any discrepancies on those two fronts. 
> 
> Title taken from _Your Rocky Spine_ by Great Lake Swimmers. 
> 
> Beta'd by [jokermoreau](http://jokermoreau.tumblr.com), who watched this grow from a 10k fic to a 29k fic. Lots of love to her for putting up with my ass.  
> Any leftover mistakes are my own.

There are two things that Alex notices about Nathan Brenshaw. One of them is his beard. It’s impressive, hanging well below where the webcam cuts off. It’s a lighter shade of red than what hangs on his shoulders, more of a honey-ginger with specks of blonde, as opposed to the apple-red of his hair.  


Brenshaw, who requests at the beginning of the interview to be called Nate, is a forest ranger out of Ridgedale, Idaho. A town that borders the Kirtley River and Heiskell National Forest, where Brenshaw works, and where a little over 2,900 people live. Nestled between two other national forests to the north and south, Heiskell sits on the eastern border of Idaho. A park with just under a million acres, its boundaries are the Payette National Forest to the west and the Montana state line to the east.  


Brenshaw tells her that, although it doesn’t have Glacier’s alpine lakes or Yellowstone’s exploding geysers, Heiskell does have something to boast about: more sightings of Bigfoot in their 922,101 acres than the two previously-named national parks combined.  


And that’s the reason he reached out via email a little over a week ago.  


“We’ve always gotten sightins of a big, hulkin’ creature in the early mornin’ and then late at night. Folks claimin’ that it ain’t a bear or moose.”  


That’s the second thing she noticed at the start: Brenshaw’s accent. He volunteered his background information before she could ask for it, letting her know that he was from the big city of Jesup, Georgia (he dragged out the words ‘big city’ and chuckled afterwards) and only moved up north for his husband’s work.  


“Sunrise hikers’ll catch movement out the corner of their eye, backpackers’ll be in their tents and hear somethin’ just on the edge of the campground, but when they go out to see, all they see is a tall figure goin’ back into the trees. I even had an IFW officer who claimed to see somethin’ that he swore wasn’t a bear. He was up near a campsite in the northern sector to check on a claim about a bear gettin’ into some trash, but whatever he saw raced off ‘fore he could follow it.”  


“Just to clarify, what’s an IFW officer?” Alex asks.  


“Oh, sorry – that’s Idaho Fish and Wildlife. He comes up from Payette a couple times a year to help out when we’re short-staffed. I’d give you his name, but he didn’t give me permission.” His lips fold down to one corner of his mouth, a half-hearted frown that bounces back to a grin when he chuckles again. “That’s IFW for ya.”  


Normally he would chalk it up to overactive imaginations or too many people watching whatever Animal Planet was airing these days, but that was before last week. Before the video he attached to his email.  


In the video, which was shot on a smartphone and left in vertical mode, two people talk in hurried, hushed tones out of frame, their breathing shallow and tight. The picture shakes as the operator tries to zoom in. Judging by the sun’s position through the tree trunks, it’s close to early evening. A breeze runs through the trail they’re on; the pine branches at the top of the frame bob up and down.  


About a hundred feet down on the trail is the main subject, though: a dark shape that moves out of a patch of sunlight. The lack of natural light and dense shadows created by the pine trees above hinder any chance of making out details, but the size and shape are obvious. Whatever it is, it’s big.  


_"What the fuck! What the fuck, Molly!"_ A girl’s voice hisses out, her breath coming short as the shape moves, as if scooting closer to the underbrush.  


_"It’s a bear,"_ Molly whispers to her companion.  


_"Are you fucking kidding me? That’s not a bear."_  


_"Well."_ Molly pauses to readjust her grip on the phone. Her fingers brush against the speaker, blowing out the audio for a moment. _"Whatever it is, it’s in our way. We have to wait for it to move off the trail."_  


_"I’m not waiting. It’s almost eight o’clock and we’ve got another mile to the car. I’m not getting trapped out here in the dark."_ They continue to whisper-argue back and forth about going around the creature, the unnamed hiker not wanting to budge on the idea, while Molly remains adamant about waiting it out.  


_You have reached your recommended step goal of the day_ , a robotic voice announces, followed by a fanfare tone that rings through the quiet forest. Panic laces their voices as they scurry into the tree line.  


_"Oh my god where’s my phone—"_ another notification dings, _"—oh my god fuck, fuck me what the fuck, where is it?"_ The camera angle is off-kilter now, the video vibrating from Molly’s trembling hands, but just enough of the trail is in the background to see the creature shuffle out of the brush and onto the trail proper. A beam of sunlight catches against it and dark brown fur shines in a patch on what might be its shoulder.  


A gorilla, Alex thinks to herself as she watches the creature move. A gorilla that happens to be 8,000 miles from its native habitat, in a state forest in Idaho.  


She doesn’t get to study it for long. As soon as one of the girls looks up, the video becomes a blur of beige and green, the dirt and foliage blurring together, with the occasional peek of a yellow running shoe. Alex moves to turn down the volume of their bloodcurdling screams, but the video cuts to black, the scrubber having reached the end.  


“That was certainly,” Alex pauses as she minimizes the video and Brenshaw’s face fills her screen once more, “something.” He chuckles at her word choice.  


“I know, shaky cam footage ain’t exactly solid proof.”  


“How did you get this?”  


“The two girls, they were so freaked out they ended up spendin’ the night out there. Next mornin’, one of their parents reported ‘em missin’. We went out and found their car at the trailhead, and then found ‘em a few hours later. They were off trail by about three miles.”  


“What did they say when you found them?”  


“Didn’t say much at first, nothin’ at all about seein’ what they saw, tried to say that they took a wrong turn and got the lost night before. It didn’t make sense, though – trail’s marked and the girls are local.” He runs a hand over his beard, scratching at his chin. “I think they were embarrassed. But after we brought ‘em to the hospital to get checked over, they told us what they saw and showed us the video. I told ‘em that I’d look into it. I didn’t want ‘em to think that we were just gonna brush ‘em off.”  


“What do you think is in the video?” His wide shoulders give an easy shrug, the connection stuttering for a moment so she misses the start of what she guesses is his trademark grin.  


“I’m hopin’ you can tell me, Miz Reagan.”

\-----

Alex leans back in her office chair as Nic hunches over her desk, his nose nearly pressed against his laptop screen. The phone alarm sounds and she tenses, waiting. The screams start soon after and she looks up when the audio cuts off. Nic catches her gaze over the computer between them.  


“I mean, not to denounce his profession, but wasn’t there that park ranger who claimed to see haunted stairs out in the woods?” Nic huffs out a laugh. She hums as she recalls the story. “It’s not like we can take their word as gospel.”  


Twisting her chair from side to side, Alex lets her head loll against the back, staring at the ceiling tiles as she says, “You’re right.”  


“I’m sensing a but here.”  


“But,” she drags the word out for emphasis, “it would be a good filler episode.”  


Nic opens his mouth to protest and closes it back without comment. A glaze settles over his eyes as he seems to mull the idea over.  


“Maybe we can snag an REI ad, too,” he says, mostly to himself, as he settles back over his laptop and types away.  


“Because when you’re running for your life from a mythical creature bent on your destruction,” Alex chimes in with her ad-friendly tone, “you need equipment you can trust.”  


They’ve moved on to pitching ads for Yeti when a knock sounds at the door. Strand lets himself in, a stack of files in the crook of his arm. He waves Alex away when she starts to get up to help. There’s a loud thud as he drops the files down onto her desk, rattling Nic’s computer. Twisting slowly in his chair, Nic glances up to give Strand a look, but the latter pays no attention as he starts separating the folders and handing them off to Alex.  


“Okay, Paul cleared it, they just want to know the dates.”  


“Nate said this week would be better than next, with the holiday next weekend.” Nic nods but she can read the hesitancy as his gaze skims over something on the screen. “What?”  


“Well, it’s – I’ve got a meeting with Paul and Terry and a few higher-ups on Wednesday.”  


“And?” Alex asks. Nic’s brow furrows.  


“And I’m not sure it can be moved,” he explains. She opens her mouth to remind him who among the two of them has experience with backpacking, when Strand speaks up.  


“Going somewhere?”  


“Idaho,” she answers. Straightening up from his hunched position, Strand casts her a curious look.  


“To Three Rivers? Why?”  


“Nope, a few hours north.”  


“Alex here is going to catch us a ‘squatch.” Two dark eyebrows shoot up above those cool, blue eyes.  


“You can’t be serious.” Strand looks from producer to host, sinking into the other chair in front of her desk when he doesn’t get the answer he’s searching for. His posture radiates that disbelief he so often exudes. “You are serious.”  


“I know it’s not exactly paranormal, more... cryptozoological than our other dives. But our listeners need a break from demons and sacred geometry and cult symphonies.” Alex could keep going with examples, but Strand’s expression doesn’t seem to be changing, so she charges forward. “Besides, we’ve hit a snag with the recent tapes, and we can’t do much until our calls are returned.”  


“You’re going with her.” Strand phrases it more as a statement than a question to Nic. Alex feels a wave of frustration wash over her.  


“No,” Nic admits with a sigh. “I tried to move my meeting this week, but the higher-ups aren’t going to budge.”  


Strand shifts back to her. How nice that her opinion is being considered.  


“You’re going alone.”  


“Yes.” She wants to leave it at that. Book her ticket and then make them both sit through a history lesson on how women have been going places and doing things for millennia, but she bites her tongue. “The ranger said he would take me out to where the sightings are, but other than that, it’ll be a solo trip.” Okay, she can’t resist one last barb. “And Nic doesn’t have the best track record with the wilderness.”  


“You’re going camping during the height of bear season. Alone. In another state.”  


“I’m not recording this, I don’t need a summary,” she says with more bite than intended. Strand shifts in his seat and sighs.  


“Are you sure this isn’t just a ploy for attention? Yellowstone gets over three million visitors every year.” He taps on his phone, the keyboard clicks loud in the relative quiet of her office. “I’ve got a list of the visitation statistics for every park in Idaho. What’s the name?”  


“Heiskell National Forest,” Nic answers. Strand’s thumb swipes up the page several times and if she were a betting woman, the parks are listed by highest to lowest visitation, which means she already knows that the point he’s making is going to be backed up by data. Which pisses her off.  


“Here – for 2016, they had a little over 300,000.” Strand locks the phone with a click and tucks it into the interior pocket of his jacket. “And let’s be honest, if you were to go outside and poll everyone on the street, I wouldn’t bet that Idaho is on their dream _vacay_ list.”  


She wrestles back the smile that wants to form, a kneejerk reaction any time Strand uses slang terms.  


“And thirty percent of the black tapes cases we’ve seen don’t involve some dying tourist trap?”  


“Ah, but this isn’t a black tape case.”  


“You say that now, but it might be after you see the video,” Alex is quick to point out and he releases a breath, his familiar chuckle escaping on the end of it.  


“How long?”  


“Five days, including travel. Four nights, two of them being at backcountry campsites,” she answers and watches the gears proverbially turning in his head, before he clears his throat and nods.  


“Okay, when do we leave?”  


Alex raises a brow at him, lips pursing in surprise. “Don’t you want to see the video first?”  


“I trust you,” Strand says as he pushes himself to his feet, “and I can watch it on the plane.”  


“Wednesday, then.”  


“Wednesday.” He shoots her a smirk over his shoulder as he heads for the office door, saying nothing more before he disappears down the hallway.

\-----

After spending an hour searching through his father’s cluttered garage, Strand concedes that the camping gear he used when he took Charlie camping up on Lake Michigan in the early nineties is likely at his storage unit.  


The one in Chicago.  


And likely riddled with holes and mildew, given the last time he remembers seeing the equipment. In fact, the only thing he manages to scrounge up are his hiking boots that he wore when trekking out to the abandoned cabin with Alex last year.  


Before he can panic at the thought of going to a store and buying what he needs, he pulls out his phone and sends a quick text to Ruby.  


_Need whatever websites recommend for a two-night backpacking trip to Idaho. Minus boots._

_You hit the scotch too hard boss?  
_

_Ha ha. Have it overnighted. I need it by tomorrow night.  
_

_Got it._  


He tucks the phone away, intent on escaping the garage, when another text dings.  


_One person tent or two?_  


Following her text is an incomprehensible string of emojis, including a winking face. He doesn’t even pretend to understand what she’s trying to convey.  


_One._  


She sends back a thumbs-up.  


When he returns home the next afternoon, the front porch is decorated in cardboard boxes. Not for the last time, he’s thankful the porch isn’t visible from the road. He brings the boxes into the living room and begins unpacking the items, laying them out on the floor in a neat square so he can check off the list he printed off.  


By the time he’s done pulling tags off and removing the paper filling, the sun has dipped low in the sky. Climbing to his feet, he rubs at the pain in his knees and flips on the light. The dim interior brightens with soft, warm light. He switches on the record player in the corner and Stevie Nicks fills the quiet. On his way to the kitchen, the small box he left on the coffee table catches his eye. 

Inside is a bottle of whiskey from a local liquor store. He can’t help but wonder which list Ruby consulted that would include a decent whiskey, all while grabbing a tumbler from the dishwasher and pouring out three fingers. Wandering back into the living room, he sips at the drink while watching a YouTube packing tutorial on his phone. After rolling and shoving and organizing everything into the backpack, he tips the last of the whiskey back and glances at the bottle still sitting on the counter, then back over to the opening of the backpack.

\-----

Bright sunshine casts through the tall pines on the roadside. The sky above is a bright blue, with only the occasional cloud casting a shadow on the road and the rocky hills that enclose them a few hundred feet out on either side. A river snakes alongside the highway’s shoulder, twisting with the pavement, sometimes moving away towards the low fields that border the hills, sometimes disappearing underneath the road.  


After the first hour, the scenery starts to blend together. Trees, rocks, mountains; trees, rocks, mountains; trees, rocks, mountains, river. Strand feels as if he’s in the beginning stages of a Bob Ross painting, just smudges of green, brown, and beige. With every peak they crest over, another stretch of dark asphalt lays out in front of them. 

Strand thinks that this is probably his least favorite thing about road trips: the endless monotony of the drive. Which wouldn’t be too terrible if his companion were awake. He glances over at Alex in the passenger seat; her head rests on his rolled-up sweatshirt so she can sleep against the window. The hum of the engine and the murmur of the radio aren’t loud enough to cover her soft snores.  


The plan was for Alex to be the driver so he could look over the supposed Bigfoot sightings, but when she showed up to his house that morning to ride with him to the airport, her lack of sleep was painted across her face, with her glassy eyes and purple eyebags. He learned two years ago that she couldn’t sleep on planes (the constant hiss of the air makes her uneasy), and with the flight time from SeaTac to Boise clocking in under two hours, it didn’t allow enough time for a decent rest anyhow.  


Three hours into the drive, he gets stuck behind yet another slow-moving pickup towing yet another trailer. For six miles he tries to pass the truck, swearing when oncoming vehicles ruin every chance. Two horses blink lazily at him from behind their cage of rusted metal. If Alex had rented a sedan instead of an SUV, he would’ve been pushing seventy on the steep grade instead of the thirty miles per hour he’s chugging along at now. The universe must take pity on him, because the truck signals for a gas station up ahead on the right. Strand prepares for the liberating joy of pressing the accelerator to the floorboard.  


“Can we stop? I need to pee,” Alex mumbles against her pillow, curling her hands around the letters stitched onto the sweatshirt.  


Strand pulls into the parking lot. He fiddles with his phone while she goes inside, using the decent signal to shoot off a few texts and check his email. Ten minutes pass by the time he looks up from his phone to notice that Alex isn’t back in the passenger seat. Concern tugs at his stomach when he scans the lot and doesn’t see her, before he reasons that she must be chatting up some poor soul inside.  


The door chimes when he enters the store, the thick scent of floor cleaner and cigarette smoke hitting him. His gaze darts across the aisles of junk food and row of coolers at the back where several people mill about. No Alex.  


“Did a young woman come in here, about this tall,” Strand asks the attendant as he motions to a height around his shoulder, “with brown hair, ponytail?” The attendant nods.  


“Yeah, she left a few minutes ago.”  


“Left?” Strand asks, his tone short, betraying the anxiety flooding through him. The attendant nods again.  


“She was asking me about Bigfoot or something and this guy in line – he told her his wife had seen him, and I guess she went with him,” the attendant explains. Turning on his heel, Strand pushes back out into the bright parking lot. Hurrying down the sidewalk, he squints to see into the parked cars’ windshields. Still no Alex. When he reaches the sidewalk’s end, he spots a van parked beside the open field adjacent to the gas station.  


As he moves closer, he can see into the driver’s side window where Alex sits in the passenger seat, her forearm stretching out towards the backseat to hold out her recorder. Two dogs jump off a ramp to sniff and circle him when he rounds the van, barking all the while. A woman in a wheelchair cuts off her story and looks up at him from the open door. Alex throws open the passenger-side door.  


“Hello there,” the woman says. Strand returns the greeting, stealing a second to glance over at Alex as she scrambles out of the van.  


“Doctor Strand, this is Irene and her husband Henry,” Alex motions to the older couple inside the vehicle. Henry waves from the driver’s seat. “I was asking people in the store if they’d seen anything strange and Henry mentioned his wife, so I came out here to bother her for a story.”  


“No bother, dear,” Irene says as she tries to wrangle the dogs back into the van. Alex catches his eye and glances down at the recorder in her hand. He steps aside to let her finish and bends to pet the cocker spaniel that refuses to go inside the van until its belly rub quota has been met. Irene wraps up her story of a supposed Bigfoot tearing up their backyard in Kennewick and Alex wraps up the interview.  


While she waves goodbye at the departing van, Strand returns to their vehicle. He’s climbing into the driver’s seat when she ducks in on the passenger side, a plastic bag from the store rattling in her hand.  


“I can drive, if you’d like a break.” She pulls out a can with 2X ENERGY printed across it and shakes it for emphasis.  


“I’m fine.” Strand starts the car and ignores the pointed look she throws him as she climbs into the passenger seat.  


The next twenty minutes pass in an awkward silence. Alex fiddles with his Yale sweatshirt on her lap and stares out at the landscape. He spends his time equally split between scanning through radio stations for a clear signal and watching her pick at the fabric.  


“I’m sorry. I thought – no, I won’t lie,” she says to the trees outside her window, “I didn’t even think about letting you know where I was.”  


“It’s fine.” He keeps his tone even but she shifts in her seat to look at him. He can’t help but glance away from the road to meet her glare; her eyebrows pinch down in irritation at his indifference.  


“It’s not. That was a shitty thing for me to do, don’t act like it wasn’t.” The tight knot around his chest loosens at her words.  


“Alex, we’re both adults and I’m not your…” he searches for the word he wants to use and settles for second best, “keeper.” He wonders what she read in his expression when he found her safe and sound with a nice elderly couple, if his relief was that palpable. “If you do plan on going off on your own, just – let me know before you do next time. Please.” Seeming to accept this, she eases back into her seat.  


“The offer still stands, you know.” He makes a noise of confusion and she smiles. “For me to take over driving.”  


His knees are killing him from being bent in small compartments all day (the taxi to the airport, the airplane, this car), but he runs a cursory glance over Alex’s form and shakes his head.  


“Get some sleep.”  


He can tell she wants to protest but she can also read him pretty well; she knows when he isn’t going to budge. The sweatshirt moves from her lap to the armrest. Shuffling down to rest her head on the dark blue fabric, she pulls out her phone to plug it into the auxiliary port. The car speakers emit a cheery beep.  


“I made a road trip playlist.”  


“Oh no.”  


“Hush,” Alex commands and he can’t help but grin. Soft mandolin notes fill the car as Steve Winwood’s voice croons out of the speakers. She sighs against her makeshift pillow, her hair brushing against his arm.  


“This is going to put me to sleep.”  


“Hush,” she repeats. And so, he does.

\-----

Ridgedale is like any of the other mountain towns they’ve passed by in the past five hours. A carved welcome sign (that was painted in the late eighties and hasn’t been touched up since) reads _Welcome to Ridgedale: Forward, Together._ Underneath the motto is what used to be _Established 1903_ , although the paint has faded off on most of the letters. Instead, the sign reads: _stabl s ed 1 03_.  


Lining the main drag are the same dusty brick and clapboard-paneled buildings as the other towns. The signs hanging out over the flat sidewalks are all written in the same curly script, making Strand think they used this place as a set for a western movie and decided to keep the décor. Ridgedale Cinemas, which has fewer screens than he has bathrooms in his house, nestles in next to Kirtley River Tackle and a hair salon. Two bars sit opposite from each other: Scott’s and Wally’s, although the latter’s sign is missing its apostrophe. A hospital that looks as if it was converted from an old Lowe’s looms at the end of the strip, next to the only gas station which shares its parking lot with Fancy’s Diner and a Saveway, the only chain store in town.  


They hit what must be considered rush-hour traffic, which consists of waiting through two stoplights, before proceeding on to the park. Strand repeats Alex’s name a few times and resorts to shaking her shoulder when she doesn’t respond. She does her best impression of a cat waking up from a nap; her arms stretch up toward the ceiling and her socked feet dig into the floorboard.  


“We there yet?” She asks, perking up as they crest over a hill and come upon the Heiskell National Forest sign. 

\-----

Ranger Brenshaw is all wide smiles and thick accent when he greets them in the visitor center’s parking lot. He’s tall, though not as tall as Strand, and reminds them twice to call him Nate. He assures Alex that the gals at the visitor center will be more than happy to give her an interview tomorrow, but that everyone has gone home for the day.  


When he opens his work truck to drive them out to the trailhead, his cheeks flush pink above his beard. The inside is full of traffic cones, park maps, loose pamphlets on white-nose syndrome, and various lengths of bungee cord that he must’ve forgotten about. While he shoves it all into the floorboard behind the driver’s seat, Alex climbs into the front seat and Strand folds his legs into the back.  


The flash of discomfort on Strand’s face must catch her attention because soon he’s batting back a determined Alex Reagan who is hell-bent on switching seats. He reminds her that they’ll be hiking soon, and he can stretch his legs plenty. Before it can escalate, Brenshaw climbs in and starts the truck. Country music blares out of the speakers. He smacks the radio dial, powering it off, as he stumbles through an apology.  


“I’m glad you took my advice on the rental,” he says as they leave the visitor center behind. “This main road here won’t give you much trouble, but the access roads to most of the trails are gravel, and they get washed out real bad with the heavy rains. Last week we had somebody take a lowrider BMW on the road to Hughes Creek trail and,” he finishes the sentence by making a loud, crunching sound through bared teeth. Alex catches Strand’s gaze in the side mirror and she can see him fighting back the urge to roll his eyes.  


As they pass turn-offs and overlooks, Brenshaw waves and points to where Bigfoot sightings have been reported. When Strand asks from the backseat how long these sightings go back, Brenshaw grins. “Since before recorded time, I s’pose – but the first official one was back in the late 1800s.” Alex and he continue to chat, her recorder in hand, until they reach the parking area for Tremont Falls, where one other car sits empty.  


Brenshaw leads them onto the trail, which is marked by several large boulders and a carved wooden sign with an arrow pointing into the forest: _Tremont Falls 4.3 mi._ Next to the boulders is a map behind plexiglass that shows where the trail connects to another about a half-mile down.  


Tacked up beside the map is a sun-faded poster. 

_YOU’RE IN BEAR COUNTRY_ , it reads in block letters above a blurry photograph of a grizzly bear. There’s a cartoon penis drawn in permanent marker on the plexiglass in front of the bear’s mouth that Brenshaw scoffs at. Below that, a paper warns hikers about the recent rains and subsequent trail erosion, asking hikers to report any hazardous conditions to a ranger. The word any is underlined twice in red ball-point pen.  


The first quarter mile is all uphill that they climb at a steady rate. To the south, craggy peaks dot the horizon, visible between the pines they walk underneath. As they reach the top, the incline sharpens and the trail becomes a makeshift stone staircase to compensate for the angle. Alex struggles with several steps that reach her mid-thigh and huffs when her two long-legged companions don’t appear phased. Some rocks rattle under their weight, which Brenshaw likens to the recent hard rains. He points to the mud’s erosion and to the standing water in places as evidence of the storm that came through this morning.  


He must take pity on the two of them because he makes a show of stepping off to the side when they reach level ground at the top. Voices carry up to them; Alex glances down to see two women making their way up the hill on the opposite side.  


“I hope I can cut out my heavy breathing during that last leg,” Alex chuckles as she pulls in deep, even breaths. She looks over to Strand and sees him doing the same, although somehow with more finesse than she can manage. The women reach the even ground and pause to catch their breath. A curly-haired toddler waves at the three of them from a carrier on the taller woman’s back. They wave back.  


“How’re the falls?” Brenshaw asks them and soon enough, he’s introducing Alex and Strand, and the taller woman – Lucy – agrees to a quick interview after revealing that she’s a fan of the show. Lucy is about the same height as Brenshaw, with wide fern-green eyes that almost disappear when she laughs and a button nose that only appears in profile. She denies ever having seen anything Bigfoot-like while hiking, but she does recall hearing a strange noise once while loading the car up from a hike a few months prior.  


“Can you describe the noise?” Alex asks. Lucy’s nose scrunches up as she drags out a hum, as if deciding how to articulate it.  


“It sounded like a coyote at first. They sort of bark and then let out a high-pitched howl. We’d misjudged how strenuous the trail was and then lollygagged at the overlook, so by the time we made it back to the car it was already dark. We pack flashlights, though, so I aimed it around but didn’t see anything.”  


“Did it sound close enough that you thought it was there with you, that it was close by?”  


“Um, yes and no. It’s like the sound would arc from way out and then it would come again but be closer, maybe a few hundred feet away. So, like I said, coyotes made the best sense. Maybe two of them out there just yelling at each other.” Lucy shrugs and pushes a chunk of loose hair behind her ear. “But then – this sounds so stupid but the closer one, it got quieter, but it didn’t seem like it moved away. And it was like it was pacing back and forth from one end to the other.”  


She sweeps her hand in front of her as if to demonstrate. “But I never heard any movement, no footsteps, nothing – and I moved my flashlight with the sound but never saw anything. So, I was getting ready to get in the car and it’s like whatever was making the sound started… whistling. Like the pitch went from high to low, and it would happen every few seconds. It didn’t sound anything like a bird. It kinda reminded me of when my grandmother would call us to supper, like someone calling out ‘yoo-hoo.’”  


“That must have been scary.” 

Lucy breaks into a nervous laugh and nods, pushing her hair back again.  


“It definitely was. I jumped in the car and we left.”  


“The person you were hiking with, did they hear it too?” Lucy throws a glance at the shorter woman who sits on a rock nearby, bouncing the toddler on her knee.  


“Well, my girlfriend chalked it up to a sick coyote. Maybe she’s right.” Lucy chews on her lip for a moment. “I do know one thing though. I’m not getting caught out here after dark again.”

\-----

“What’s your opinion on the sound, Nate?” Alex questions as they pass by a trail connection. He scratches at his thick beard and hums in thought. The trail is wide enough here that they can walk beside each other, with Strand bringing up the rear.  


“Coyotes would make the most sense. They’re active at night, although the same could be said for lots of critters. They do make the god-awfullest noises.”  


“Are they common in this area?”  


“You’d be hard-pressed to find a place where they ain’t common in North America. Idaho law considers ‘em as pests,” Brenshaw explains, “so there’s no tag required to hunt ‘em and no limit on how many a hunter can bag.”  


Alex frowns at that but says nothing as they descend into a small valley. The constant rush of a river can be heard in the distance. Large rocks and weedy grass cover the forest floor. The trail winds through the undergrowth until it disappears over a small hill.  


Brenshaw walks them to a cluster of slender evergreens on the left side of the trail.  


“Here’s where the creature would’ve been at.”  


Alex studies the ground around them but no massive footprints leap out at her, which was just as well, since she left the casting powder in her pack. She wanders down the trail to where the video was shot and snaps a photo.  


“Does it look like anything large has been through here?” She calls from her spot as she waves at Strand to step out of frame.  


“There’re some scratches on a downed tree over there,” Brenshaw motions with his shoulder out into the underbrush, “but looks like typical bear markins to me.”  


“That’s because what those girls saw was a bear,” Strand speaks up from where he stands beside Alex to keep out of her photographs. He’s close enough that she can feel the heat of his proximity, hear his soft breathing and the shift of his clothing as he twists to take in the forest. “You’re going to argue that it looked as if the creature were standing upright, and I’ll remind you that bears do that when trying to ascertain a foreign smell. Two frightened young women that probably had an open pack of trail mix in their bag, for instance.”  


“It didn’t move like a bear, though.”  


“Remind me what you studied in college. Or did you happen to double major in broadcast journalism _and_ wildlife biology?” Strand smirks at the frustration written across her face. She turns back to their guide.  


“Can you take us to where the girls were found?”  


Brenshaw checks his watch and clicks his tongue.  


“I can’t take you all the way there but if you follow me, I’ll take us off trail up to that ridge.” He points to the hill that flanks the valley on the western side. They follow him through the thick underbrush, around a cluster of boulders, and up an incline. Out of the tree line, Alex looks down and sees the churning river below as it cuts through the canyon. Beyond, the park opens up for them, jagged lines of the Rockies floating above the evening haze.  


“They scaled down these rocks and forded the river, then continued that way,” Brenshaw draws across the land with his finger, “and went about another two miles southwest. They stayed the night under an overhang and that’s where we found ‘em the next day.”  


Alex scoots closer to the edge, her boots sending pebbles skittering down the steep hillside. She tries to imagine how frightened someone would be to take that route.  


Strand shifts to angle his body to hers, not hovering, but close enough to grab her in case she goes tumbling over the edge. She knows if she mentioned it he would make a joke about her clumsiness, so she stays mum. The three of them stare down into the canyon for another long moment, until Alex turns from the edge and starts back down the hill, eager to return to the truck.

\-----

Alex knows that the painting above the dresser can’t be moving.  


She saw it earlier when she was flipping through channels on the motel’s tiny TV, waiting for Strand to come back with dinner. With the local news on for background noise, she had flopped back onto the bed and her gaze had fallen onto the painting.  


The picture was yellowed with age, the glass and frame coated with a fine layer of dust. Four horses pull a rickety stagecoach, the driver frozen as he raises a whip. The background is a nondescript prairie, though Alex had noticed there didn’t seem to be anything chasing them, no reason for the manic sheen in the horses’ eyes as they strain against their reigns.  


The same painting she’s looking at now, only – with the butter-yellow glow of an old streetlight pouring in, the horses seem to be moving, their hooves kicking up dust as they try to escape.  


Alex clicks on the bedside lamp, so the light will stop the trick her mind is playing; she rubs at her eyes, blinking away tears from the pressure of her fingers. Seeking reassurance, she turns to wake up Strand, to ask him – but he’s not there.  


Anxiety spikes through her. She searches the room, but there’s no glasses on the nightstand, no fancy luggage on the floor.  


“Richard?” She asks the open bathroom door, but she can see from how the light filters in that he’s not there. She looks back to the painting.  


The whip in the driver’s hand flicks.  


The horses buck and kick but the driver – he’s there on the seat and then on the hitch and swinging the whip down below one of the horses and there’s an awful tearing sound that’s lost under the animal’s cry of pain. It collapses, bringing the others down with it, their bones snapping like thick branches. Blood sprays out, organs hit the ground with a wet slap, glittering in the sun. The other horses thrash against their bindings as the driver swings again and again and again, the whip splitting their skin open as they scream and buck, trying to get away.  


Alex clamps a hand over her mouth but the foul, coppery smell claws at her throat as she breathes, her shoulders shaking as the animals’ limbs twitch, their entrails in shiny, wet heaps. She covers her eyes.  


Something whistles inside the room.  


Every hair stands on end as she slides her sweat-slick palm down from her eyes.  


The driver. He’s staring right at her from inside the painting.  


He can see her.  


_He can see her_ , cowering against the headboard.  


She draws her knees up to her chest, pulling the sheet up with them. The whip drags through the blood and viscera as he lumbers closer – his details come into focus: the sun-ravaged face and the limp, greasy hair that falls around his head in chunks, the scabbed lips that pull apart to reveal blackened gums.  


Alex tugs at the sheet, wants to dive under it but it doesn’t budge and so she pulls harder, jerking at the fabric and she hears a rattling sound and looks up to see the man slamming a fist against the glass.  


Diagonal cracks splinter across the frame and his fingers push out through the canvas; blood runs and collects along the wooden frame and drips down the wall as he calls out her name, his voice loud in her ear. Terror surges through her veins, licking up her spine and darkening her vision, the edges of the world graying. Glass shatters as it lands on the dresser, the canvas seams rending as he heaves his body out of the painting; blood and shredded innards follow, slicken the wall and pool on the dresser where he falls, body slumped over and still, the only sound is the blood pattering against the wooden veneer.  


Spit strings like spiderwebs as she parts her lips to scream when she hears a sharp inhale, the whistle of air being sucked in through jagged teeth and then he’s there, crawling towards her, bloody hands gripping at the sheets and her legs, holding her down and Alex screams, thrashes as she bucks up against his hold and he drags his body up; she can taste him on her tongue, the rancid meat smell of him and the whip is gone now, it’s that orange extension cord and she throws a fist to —  


“Alex, wake up.” She jerks back from the voice and her head smacks against something hard, eyes fluttering open at the pain. Strand sits on the edge of her bed, glasses askew, a hand hovering in the open space between them. The table lamp bathes the room in a frost-white glow. “Are you all right?”  


“Fine,” she breathes out when she sees the painting over Strand’s shoulder is intact. “Did I – I didn’t hit you, did I?”  


“No.”  


Strand studies her for a moment longer and she dreads what he’ll say next, if he’ll follow with some poor attempt at comfort, that whatever she saw wasn’t real.  


She’s too annoyed at herself for thinking that having someone in the room with her might help with the nightmares. Before he can start, she kicks out from under the blankets and pushes up to hide in the bathroom, but he throws out his arm to stop her.  


“Glass.” He nods to where shards glint against the floor. “You knocked it off the nightstand.”  


“Oh,” she says, “sorry.”  


His hand follows the bend of her elbow and moves to her hand, splayed out on the bed. He folds his hand around hers and squeezes for a beat before drawing away. Fetching a hand towel from the bathroom, he cleans the glass from the floor, picking each shard up like he’s about to fit them into a puzzle.  


The overhead light crackles when he flips it on to spot any smaller fragments. When he’s satisfied, he dumps the towel into the bin and switches off the big light. Grabbing a pair of her sport sandals, he sets them next to her bed, just in case. She shuts her eyes when he turns off the lamp, not wanting to see how long it takes for the painting to move in the darkness. Instead, she listens to Strand get back into his bed and waits for his breathing to even out. “Thanks.”  


“Of course,” he responds. She hears him shift underneath his blankets and she sneaks a peek to see him facing her.  


His face looks softer without his glasses. She wonders how much he can see of her, or if she’s a pale blur in the darkness. He falls asleep before she can ask, and she hesitantly follows suit.

\-----

There are at least two upsides to having insomnia, Alex has found. The first is that she’s able to get shit done. By the time Strand’s alarm goes off at six, she’s been up for three hours and has already emailed a contact of a contact at Cornell, downloaded the audio from her recorder, and popped down to the gas station for coffee and an impromptu interview with the attendant.  


She’s enjoying the other upside on the second-floor balcony in front of their room when Strand pokes his head out the door.  


“Morning,” she greets over the rim of her to-go cup. He trudges over to lean against the railing beside her and grabs the other cup from the railing, taking a long sip as he rubs the sleep from his eyes. Cloud cover blocks most of the sunrise, but within a few minutes there’s a break in the horizon and bright orange spills out over the treetops.  


“Did you get any sleep?” He asks in his rugged morning voice, but she detects the concern woven through the question.  


It’s been a while since he was present for one of her sleepless nights. She stays over at his place occasionally when he deems it too late for her to drive home. The guest bedroom on the second floor has seen much more of her since they started reviewing the black tapes backlog. The bedroom happens to be at the other end of the house from Strand’s, though, so any insomnia she experiences is muffled through plaster, insulation, and distance.  


“Some.” He hums into his coffee at her vague response. Steering the conversation away, she continues, “I’ve got a few more things on the to-do list before we hit the trail.” They drink in tandem. Strand’s shoulders loosen as he exhales. She knocks her shoulder into his and catches his smile, even as he slightly turns to hide it. “But that can all wait until after a shower and breakfast.”

\-----

By mid-morning, after food and interviews with the staff at Fancy’s Diner, followed by a brief stop at the visitor’s center to talk with the gals, they take Forest Road 10 – which is nothing more than a glorified one-lane gravel road – to the ranger station. Brenshaw greets them on the front stoop and waves them inside.  


The interior is much like the outside: wooden. Fat logs stack to the ceiling to form the exterior walls. More wood runs across the floor. A twin bed lines the wall next to the bathroom on the left, while a tiny kitchenette fills most of the wall opposite. A bank of windows takes up the back wall, underneath them sits a service-cart-turned-table with two metal folding chairs. As wide as the cabin appears, the space is rather cramped, even with the barest of necessities.  


Alex supposes this is what Strand must experience when he comes into her office, although she’s sure they could debate on what counts as a necessity.  


To either side of the front door, metal L-shaped desks fill the corners. The left desk holds a healthy stack of papers and various desk accessories.  


The right desk is a sort of organized chaos. Glossy magazines, manila folders, and open mail envelopes scatter across the desk’s surface. A large corkboard (of which they can only see the top frame) is covered in posters, notices, orange post-its, print outs, maps, and 4x6 photos. Alex spots four calendars – some tacked to the corkboard, some trapped underneath magnets on the sides of the desk. All are set to the current month and seem to be for various activities; a solunar calendar shows that today’s best time for fishing is between one and two in the afternoon.  


They’re introduced to Aaron Delacroix, the other ranger that occupies the station, a broad man with tight, black curls and a reserved disposition. When Alex asks him if he believes there’s a Bigfoot wandering around their park, his single eyebrow raise is the only response she receives.  


Brenshaw grabs the two folding chairs and shows them to his desk. When she narrates this later, Alex will let the listeners decide on which desk is his. Strand takes a seat and crosses his legs, as if they’re here to discuss stocks instead of a camera-shy cryptid.  


“Got good news and bad news, Miz Reagan.”  


“Bad news first.”  


“I got in touch with the girls’ parents. They didn’t want any part of any interview.” She deflates a little at the rejection, as prepared as she was for it, given the girls are minors. “I did give ‘em your number in case they change their minds. I wouldn’t hold out any hope, though.”  


“And the good news?”  


“That comes in two parts, actually. First, I’ve got those photos we talked about yesterday all printed out.” He roots around his desk and finds a manila folder labeled _BF Photos_. “Second, I got Michael—” he cuts himself off and glances down to the blinking red dot on the recorder, “—aw shit, uh, can you delete that part? The IFW officer, he’s—”  


After reassuring him that she’ll cut out the name drop, he continues on.  


“Anyway, the IFW officer brought me a trail camera for you to use, if ya’d like.”  


She takes the camera from him, thanking him as she runs a hand along the camouflage-print cover. He shows her how to open the cover and set the trigger preferences, then jokes that they can use Strand as a stand-in Bigfoot if she’d like to try it out. The image of Strand walking across the open field behind the cabin, shoulders slumped to replicate Bigfoot is an… interesting one.  


Alex steers the conversation back to the photographs before she can take Brenshaw up on his offer.  


Most are wide landscape shots with a dark blurry object circled in red pen. The blur stands next to a tree, the blur stands behind a log in a dry riverbed. Other photographs are zoomed in, though the heavy pixilation makes it difficult to discern any details aside from height. Only a select few have the outline of an arm and head, though they are too fuzzy to make out much more.  


Strand shakes his head and clicks his tongue mockingly at each photo he’s handed, even chuckling at a few of them.  


“Would you mind scanning these to me?” Alex asks. “I’d like to send them with the video for a biologist to take a look at.”  


“You don’t need a degree to know these are nothing more than lens aberrations or bears or,” Strand releases a breathy chuckle, “very convincing low-hanging branches.” Alex side-eyes him and he shrugs in response. Brenshaw clears his throat to catch their attention.  


“I can do that. Same email as before?”  


“Yeah, same email. And I’ve got one last question.”  


“Shoot.”  


“How decent is the WiFi signal here?”

\-----

Skype chimes as it attempts to connect her call in the quiet station. A river tubing incident sent Brenshaw and Delacroix out a half-hour ago, leaving Strand and her with the station to themselves.  


Doctor Daniel Carringer picked the wrong career path, Alex decides as the call connects. With his dark brown eyes and olive complexion, Carringer could be a stand-in for Santiago Cabrera, smiling at her from the laptop screen. The man looks as if he belongs in a firehouse or on the cover of a trashy romance clutching a fainting woman to his chest, not a cramped college office.  


Although she knows some of his background from their mutual contact, he graciously lists his credentials for her. He studied wildlife biology at the University of Wyoming before attending Cornell for his Ph.D. For nine years, he worked as a field researcher at the University of Minnesota and then at Washington State University, before moving back up to Ithaca for his current teaching position at his alma mater. The focus of all those years of studying and trekking through the wilderness? Bears. More specifically, the American black bear and the North American brown bear.  


“Or what everyone refers to as a grizzly bear,” he elaborates with a long-suffering look. It’s the same one that she receives from Strand when she entertains the existence of the paranormal.  


“Do you take offense to the name?” Carringer tips his head back and forth, as if debating how to answer.  


“I think it gives them a bad rap. Of course, I could also blame George Ord for starting that, I suppose. He classified them as _Ursus arctos horribilis_.”  


“Harsh.” Carringer chuckles at her response, his dazzling smile lighting up the screen. “So, given the subject of this episode, I have to ask: have you ever seen anything unexplained while out in the field?”  


“I’ve followed bears through the northwest, BC, Alberta, Minnesota, and through the Appalachian Mountains. And unless you consider the few hill people I’ve come across, no. I’ve never seen anything unexplained.”  


“Okay, so you're saying unequivocally that there’s no such thing as Bigfoot?” She teases and he shakes his head.  


“No Bigfoots,” he confirms with a grin. “As a man of science, I guess I have to be the first one to deliver the unfortunate news that Bigfoot doesn’t exist.”  


“Oh, you’re not the first. I’ve recently been told the same by another man of science.” Alex glances over to Strand, who’s studying a map of their hiking route. He doesn’t look up from the map, but his wry smile makes an appearance.  


“Another wildlife biologist? I have to ask, who did you talk to?” Carringer says, his eyes crinkling as he grins.  


“No, my partner – Doctor Strand. His degrees are in psychology, mythology, and religion,” Alex explains. A smirk forms on Carringer’s handsome face.  


“The soft sciences are important, too, I suppose.” She feels a prick of irritation in her chest. In her peripheral, Strand’s shoulders tighten. Before the interview can become a pissing contest, Alex asks if Carringer looked over the files she sent. He had, and he goes over most of the photos with her, pointing out which ones are simply poor-quality shots of bears, which ones might be elk or moose native to the area.  


On the video, he leans more towards it being a curious black bear.  


“A bear that walks on two feet?”  


“Bears stand on their hind legs often – it’s what they do when they see something interesting and want to get a better smell of it.”  


Without even looking, Alex can tell Strand is physically restraining himself from making a pointed noise at that. She still feels victorious, though, because he’s only keeping quiet because she’s recording; if he taints her audio, she’ll kill him.  


Which he’s well aware of because she’s told him so before.  


Carringer continues unaware, “It is very unusual for them to walk on two feet, but I’ve seen it. Especially in areas near parks or people, where bears are accustomed to being given food by humans. There’s a video from a park in South Korea where two bears walk alongside a bus and the driver tosses them treats like they’re dogs doing tricks.” He taps at his keyboard and soon her email notification chimes with a video link.  


When she mentions the recent DNA tests done by a retired zoologist that didn’t match up to any known animal, Carringer rolls his eyes and rants for a few minutes about degraded test samples.  


“So, in your opinion,” Alex asks, “there’s not even a slight chance of Bigfoot existing?”  


“Not a chance,” he says. “Although, I have heard stories about him being spotted in the Adirondacks, so if you’re ever upstate and need a hand, I’ll be more than happy to come along. I’ll certainly be the talk of my department if I go ‘squatch hunting.”

\-----

Delacroix, having returned as Alex sends her last email, offers to let them leave their vehicle at the station and drive them up to the trailhead. Which is how, after an early lunch at a gas-station- _cum_ -diner, Strand finds himself being lectured on bear-proofing their campsite while Alex checks and rechecks her pack. He feels like a child on the first day of school, clutching at the straps of his backpack, while a man fifteen years his junior talks about a bear-muda triangle with a straight face as techno music plays from the open window.  


Strand preferred it when Delacroix kept to one-word sentences.  


“Okay, all set?” Alex asks as she hops down from the truck bed and slams the tailgate into place. Strand takes the lifeline and nods, backing away from the truck as Alex thanks Delacroix for the ride. He flicks his hand up and pulls out onto the highway.  


They watch the truck head north, the sun sparkling against the windows before it takes the next curve and the engine noise fades. Strand lifts Alex’s pack and helps her into it, giving her space as she clips in and adjusts the straps.  


Despite the weight of the pack, she seems eager to start their hike as she checks his straps for him, tugging at his sternum strap to ensure it isn’t too loose.  


Her usually loose hair is pulled back into a single braid, sunglasses nestled onto her head. The usual wardrobe of jeans is gone, replaced with gray shorts, though he can see she couldn’t forgo the PNWS-logo T-shirt. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t appreciate the amount of leg her current outfit shows off. All the same, he resists the childish urge to tug at the rope of hair and nods when she asks if he’s ready.  


Their planned route for the day will take them on a connecting trail for a few miles before they’ll jump onto the Mount Loeb trail. They’ll hike for another eight miles until they reach the backcountry campsite that sits a half-mile past Loeb’s summit.  


Tomorrow, they’ll take Loeb to Tremont Falls, then they’ll hike to Mount Hísemtuks the day after, before descending to its trailhead. There, they’ll catch a ride from Brenshaw back to town, then fly home the next day. Alex quoted him thirty-two miles over the three days, giving them ample time to hunt the supposed Bigfoot.  


He enjoys the company of a focused Alex for the starting miles. Birdsongs and the metallic tinkle of their pack zippers harmonize with their rough breathing as they ascend into the midday sky. Within the hour, they make it to the trail connection. Alex snaps a photo of the sign with her phone before pulling him in beside her for a self-portrait.  


“I would tweet this if I thought there would be a decent connection.”  


“Please don’t,” he requests as he falls into step behind her. “I’ve enjoyed the anonymity here. We don’t need your incessant fanbase knowing where we’re at.”  


Alex twists back to grin at him but promises to keep the photo to herself until they’re back in Seattle. Small mercies, he guesses.

\-----

There must be a joke in some wilderness magazine about a man with three degrees being unable to set up a tent. Strand’s ashamed that, despite the how-to guide that came with the damn thing, he’s been dragging out the punchline for the past twenty minutes. When he took Charlie camping, their tents were simple: two tent poles and four stakes. He even thought it special when he used a nearby tree to cover both tents with a raised tarp, so they could sit in camping chairs and enjoy a nice bout of summer rain.  


“Need help?”  


And here he was hoping to be finished setting up by the time Alex returned to announce dinner. In lieu of an answer, he rocks back onto his heels and levels a glare at her that she answers with her soft laugh. He pushes down the familiar feeling that her laugh produces. “C’mon, if we can’t figure it out together, you can always bunk in mine.”  


“Is that why you brought a larger tent? You thought I’d forget to pack one?”  


“It’s the only one I had in storage,” she explains as she untangles the tent poles from where they’ve gotten stuck in the rainfly. “Last time I used it was for the PNWS camping trip and that was three years ago.”  


“Didn’t become an annual event?” Bending down to hook the tent clips to the poles, she chuckles.  


“Uhh, no. In fact, we’re probably all on some no entry list for Olympic National Park now because of what happened.” He wants to ask but refrains, content to step back as she bounces around the four corners of the tent, staking and tightening as she goes.  


It’s refreshing to see another side to her, to see that she has interests outside of work. Especially interests other than sitting with him in stuffy, old basements to pour over supposedly-demonic geometry and apocalypse cults.  


After dinner, they return to camp for Alex to grab her equipment before venturing farther down the trail. She narrates the several sightings by other campers in the area into her recorder as they descend into a thicket of trees. The peak above them blocks the last spread of dusk, so Strand aims his flashlight to the ground so they can see where they’re going.  


She stops to secure the game camera off the trail before they push on, crawling along a section of fallen rock before they come out to a cliff. The circular beam of light darts against the tree tops below them as he sweeps it back and forth.  


Alex speaks into the recorder, talking on about how the drop-off reminds her of the cover of a childhood book she owned, _Where the Sidewalk Ends._ He squints into the darkness and listens to the dulcet tone of her voice, content to stand there at the edge with her for a while.

\-----

Soft hoots sound from up above. It’s late now – close to midnight when Alex checks her watch – and other than some small animals in the underbrush and a whitetail deer that bolted from their flashlights, it’s been a quiet night. For the past hour, they’ve been sitting on the rocky ledge a quarter-mile from camp, watching the nighttime come alive as weak moonlight filters through the clouds.  


Alex thinks about how she thought being in the wilderness would bring her a sense of peace, like it had for so many years, about how having space would make her less afraid. Because the shadows in her bedroom’s corners, the figures in her microwave’s reflection, and the things that peek at her from around her door frames all occur within the confines of her rental house. And she thought space would fix all of that.  


And it does.  


Here in the woods, she sees movement in the tree line, but it must be a deer. Knocks that echo around the forest are branches colliding in the wind. At night, though, there’s only so far her flashlight can illuminate before the darkness swallows it. She searches for the shine of brilliant yellow-green eyes, wanting the sound she hears to be something physical, something that she can point to and know that Strand will see it too.  


Having him around helps and she’s glad she didn’t forgo this alone – not that she’ll give him the satisfaction of knowing.  


“Do you want to head back?” Strand asks, his voice barely above a whisper. Clicking on her flashlight, she does one last sweep of the forest below them and nods. Behind him, the shadows stretch out from the trees. Strand stands up and shakes out his legs, his boots scuffing against the dirt. On the edge of her flashlight, she watches a shadow break off and make its way over the rock-strewn hillside towards them. The shadow scuttles over a rock and settles there in the crevice.  


“Alex?”  


A hand floats in front of her vision. She takes it, feeling the warmth of his skin against hers. He hisses and makes a comment about her chilled skin as he helps her up.  


Alex keeps an eye on the spot, but the shadow doesn’t follow. They cut across the ledge and jump down onto the trail, their lights bobbing along the ground as they head for camp. 

\-----

Strand rubs at his eyes and squints at the ceiling of his tent. Outside, the world is still dark. The watch next to his head reads 3:32 a.m. when he taps at the screen. He takes a deep breath to steady himself for whatever snapped him awake. The sharp, plastic smell of the new tent and the cloying campfire smoke that clings to his clothing make him slightly dizzy. Straining to listen for movement outside, he hears a cricket chirp quietly behind the tent.  


A muffled scream cuts across the camp and he’s scrambling out of his sleeping bag and diving out of his tent to get to Alex. Barely giving the camp a cursory sweep, he calls out her name as he falls to his knees in front of her tent. Her only response is a hitching sob that she can’t seem to breathe around. Panic spikes through him as his hands fumble for the zipper. He calls her name again, louder this time.  


The zipper gives. He grabs the tent flap and jerks it up, the zipper grinding against the teeth as he pushes his way inside. Swinging his flashlight across the interior, he searches for an animal or insect that would explain her cries. When he shines the light on Alex, the reason becomes painfully obvious.  


Sweat drenches her forehead where her dark hair clings to pale skin. Her fingers are white from where they clench at the sleeping bag across her chest. Angry red lines mar the curve of her neck where she’s scratched at her skin.  


“Alex,” he calls again but she doesn’t wake. Her spine arches and her legs kick at the confines of the sleeping bag. She gasps for air around another cry. Her fingers abandon the bag and reach up to dig at her neck. Strand drops the flashlight and pulls her hands down before she can do any more harm. Holding her hands down with one forearm, his other hand pushes the sweat-drenched hair off her face.  


“Alex, you’re having a nightmare. It’s me, it’s Richard – you have to wake up before you hurt yourself.”  


Another whine escapes her but she seems to settle, her body losing its fight. He eases his arm off her hands.  


“You’re having a nightmare. Wake up, Alex.”  


Her eyes snap open. Strand falls back onto his ass when she kicks out of the sleeping bag and crawls out of the tent. Following, he takes a seat next to her in the dirt and waits.  


Alex digs her knees and fingers into the earth and takes deep, slow breaths while she waits for the cocktail of fear and anxiety to dissipate. Through her hair, she sees Strand a few feet away, watching her with concern.  


“I’m – I’m okay.”  


“No, you’re not,” he says. The words lack his usual smarmy tone when he contradicts her. She almost wishes he would be an asshole to her, because it would be easier to let her embarrassment melt into anger. Folding herself back to a sitting position, she pushes her hair back and continues the breathing method Bernier suggested. Not trusting what she’ll see if she opens her eyes right now, she keeps them closed.  


Footsteps pad across the grass as Strand moves off to rustle in his tent before returning. His light touch on her arm surprises her but she allows him to maneuver her closer to the small campfire. He drapes the blanket he holds over her shoulders and sets about starting a fire. Soon, tiny licks of flame curl around the twigs as he methodically arranges the kindling. When the fire is big enough for proper wood, he feeds it and settles back against the ground next to her. His shoulder brushes against hers. Chancing a glance at him, she feels a rush of heat crawl up her cheeks when he meets her gaze. The glow of the fire reflects against his glasses; this close, she can see the smudges that cloud the lenses. “Do you want to tell me what you dreamed?”  


“Not really,” she says, letting out a short, humorless laugh. “But my sleep therapist would want me to.”  


“Well, I’m not your sleep therapist,” Strand counters. “If you don’t want to talk about it, then you don’t have to.”  


They both turn back to watch the orange-red flames dance over the wood. Sparks shoot up, flickering as they fade into the night air. Alex licks at her dry lips and leans into his shoulder, enjoying the solid weight of him next to her.  


“I was here, at the campsite. I was alone but you were somewhere close-by, gathering firewood I think,” she pauses to recall the order of events before continuing, “and I heard something on the trail and I thought it was you but it wasn’t – it was Maddie.”  


“The housekeeper?”  


“Yeah, she was standing there with her back to me, but I knew it was – it was her.”  
The wind shifts and brings a cloud of smoke towards them. Her eyes water and she rubs them to get rid of the stinging sensation. "She had the extension cord around her neck and it floated above her in the air – it was like she was hanging from some invisible rafter, but her feet were on the ground. I shined my flashlight on her and I saw her hands twitch.”  


Alex mimics the motion, her fingers curling into her palms, fingernails leaving crescent marks in her skin.  


“And then she – she started to turn on the cord and it was like her feet weren’t even on the ground anymore. It was like this ballerina ornament I had as a kid that I would twist the string and it would spin from the tree and she was like that, but slower, and when she turned around completely the cord snapped and she fell to the ground. And I thought she was – but then she was… crawling towards me. Her neck was still hanging from the cord, but her head was flopped over to the side and she was grinning at me.”  


The nightmare’s image of her flashes through Alex’s mind: flies swarming the purple-blue groove around her neck that oozes a mixture of pus and blood, the fluids staining the collar of the canary-yellow dress she wears, her breath wheezing, rattling her chest as she drags her body across the ground, gaining speed as dream-Alex stumbles back.  


“I turned and ran but she was so fucking fast; I could hear her getting closer and she was chanting and calling me ‘little one’. I don’t know how but I ended up on some cliff and I remember–” she cuts herself off to suck in a breath, “–I remember thinking about how I wanted to die. If I wanted to try to fight her off, or just throw myself off the cliff to get away from her. I picked the cliff.”  


Strand cups a hand over her shoulder and holds tight.  


“But I didn’t get to jump because she was already there and she tackled me but we didn’t go over – I don’t know how. She wrapped the cord around my throat.” Alex swallows and sweeps her hair back away from where its fallen in her face. “She kept chanting and her grip was so strong and she smelled like that wall of blood, and I tried fighting her off but I knew I wasn’t strong enough and I heard you call my name and I knew I was going to die and you would find me and she would go after you next so I tried telling you, but I couldn’t get the cord off, and then I woke up.”  


The world comes back into focus. The fire crackles as one of the small logs gives way to the heat and falls into the hot coals, a flurry of sparks flying up. Alex repeats the breathing technique, inhaling for four seconds, holding for four, and exhaling for four. The brief spike of adrenaline that rushed through her while she was relaying the dream fades. Fatigue follows in its wake. Strand tightens his hold, his hand skating up and down her arm.  


“Are your dreams usually this detailed?”  


“Yeah.” She leaves out that she’s had the same dream before, but it was in her house, and when she came to she was on her kitchen floor clutching a knife. She also leaves out that she doesn’t believe it was just a dream that time.  


“I’m sorry.” Alex shrugs in response and he sighs at her indifference. “I know you’ve been having trouble sleeping for quite some time. Your sleep therapist – is seeing her helping at all?” It would be easier to lie, but the late hour is wearing on her. She opts for the truth, instead.  


“Not really,” she mutters, dropping her head to rest against the worn flannel of his shirt. Strand leans over to tuck the blanket in around her and adjusts her to a more comfortable position, letting her use his side as a pillow.  


“I’m sorry,” he repeats and she hums in response. Her eyes fall closed as she breathes in the syrupy smoke and slept-in cotton of Strand’s shirt. He continues to stroke her arm, the repetitive motion of his touch lulling her to sleep.  


Alex wakes to movement, the gentle sway of being carried. The chilled interior of her tent greets her when she opens her eyes. Strand settles her onto the sleeping pad and bag, tucking the blanket in around her. His lips pull up into a soft smile when he notices her watching and she feels the weight of her eyelids when she blinks.  


“I’ll see you in the morning,” Strand says.  


Exhaustion pulls at her bones like a receding tide. Before she can reply, she’s swept back under.

\-----

After a breakfast of instant oatmeal and cowboy coffee, both of which Strand makes a face at, they pack up to be back on the trail by eight. Alex returns from collecting the game camera and the morning fire’s ashes to scatter to see Strand digging through the debris of his tent.  


“Have you seen my lantern?” Strand asks.  


“Oh, it’s in my pack. You need it for something?”  


“No, I was – wait, how’d it get in yours?”  


“I put it there.” He turns around and gives her a long-suffering look.  


“Why?”  


“To lessen your weight.” The look becomes more of a glare. “I offered to go through your pack at the ranger station and you said no. I could see yesterday that you had too much weight. So, I took a couple pounds off you.”  


“I’m not an invalid.”  


“I never said that you were.”  


“Alex.”  


“I also have the binoculars, that huge field guide you insisted on bringing, and the fifth of whiskey. I’m not a gram weenie, but that’s almost seven pounds. Which I’m happy to carry since I didn’t bring everything but the kitchen sink.” Her attempt at humor falls flat with her audience.  


“If I need your help, I’ll ask for it,” Strand says in a bitter-laced tone. He bends down to roll up his tent, the line of his jaw tight with tension. Rather than poke the bear, she gathers up the bag of ashes and heads south from camp along a side trail. The sack in her grip swings with her, brushing against the wiry grass that creeps to the edge of the path.  


Descending into a small clearing, Alex steps out from under the trail’s tree cover. Tall grass tickles at her calves. Untwisting the sack, she cradles it in the crook of her elbow and circles the clearing, spilling it out into the weeds. When she’s done, she folds the sack up, plops down into the grass, and looks up toward the clear sky. The morning sun warms her skin.  


She knows that Strand sees what she did as a dig at his age, that he must not be able to carry all that weight, being twenty years older than her. If she explains to him that she truly doesn’t give a fuck about how old he is and that it’s common courtesy to divvy up supplies, it’ll only serve to frustrate him more. He’ll think she’s making excuses. For a man so educated in the field of psychology and how people perceive things, he sure knows how to turn that ability off when it comes to his own life.  


When Strand gets upset, he likes to walk away, go somewhere that isn’t wherever here is, and lick at his wounds. So, she takes her time on the way back to camp, strolling more than hiking. And when she does return, she does the final checks of the campsite, slides her pack on, and asks him if he’s ready to go. At his nod, she gestures for him to start them off, and they begin the descent down the mountain.  


After a quarter mile, Alex gradually falls behind; she slows down to check her laces, she pauses to get a shot of a blue-tailed skink crawling on the scaly bark of a ponderosa pine, waving Strand to go on each time. Eventually, she coasts back far enough where he won’t hear her footsteps and can have his bubble of solitude. For the next two miles, it’s just her and the trail. She spots Strand’s pack – a garish, highlighter-orange that’s hard on the eyes (which he defended but she’s caught him grimacing at) – as it flickers in between the trees and disappears around bends.  


Rounding one of the bends, she’s surprised to find him stopped. He glances at her around the water bottle he’s drinking from and nods at her. Before she can wrestle her own bottle out, he caps his and tosses it to her.  


They both watch it sail past her outstretched hand and over the hillside, saved from a sharp plummet into the valley below by a large pile of rocks. Strand offers to shimmy down the slope to retrieve the bottle, Alex offers to help him back up onto the trail. He wipes the dirt from the bottle and hands it to her, Strand’s version of an olive branch, a silent admission of his overreaction.  


She takes it.  


They continue, side-by-side. 

\-----

“How do you know so much about this?”  


“Hmm?”  


“Backpacking, camping, all this.”  


Strand motions to the wilderness surrounding them. The open tuna packet in his hand flashes against the sunlight. They stopped for lunch on the crags of an overlook, one of the last before the trail tucks itself back against the mountain and they begin the proper descent into Tremont Valley. Due east, Mount Hísemtuks – their last stop of the trip – hovers above the treetops.  


The boulders they sit on are hot from the midday sun; Alex wiggles her ass so her shorts take the brunt of the heat.  


“You seem to be much more knowledgeable than someone who read a bunch of articles in Backpacker Monthly.”  


“In college, I had a friend who hiked the AT and the MST and would brag about it all the time. I’d done a few camping trips with friends and hiked most of the trails up near where I grew up in Kelowna and that made me experienced.” Alex rolls her eyes at the word. “So, I decided my sophomore year I would take out more student loan money than I needed and fund the trip.”  


“Did you go alone?”  


“Yeah – none of my friends could put up the money for it. But I was so invested in it that I didn’t care. And then I was forty miles from the Virginia state line and I was trying to make it to a shelter that was still ten miles away, and I just… couldn’t,” she says. “It was sleeting so high in the mountains and I was alone and wet and cold and I sat down on a rock off the trail so people wouldn’t see me and I cried.” She takes a swig of water to wash down the beef jerky and shakes her head, grinning. “I hadn’t wanted to do the PCT because hiking through California for 1,600 miles didn’t sound fun at all, and fourteen states sounds so much more badass than three, and here I was freezing my ass off and sobbing because I hadn’t gotten a trail name yet. But eventually I looked up and everything around me was white and there was a girl, she’d been hiking with a friend that had left due to a family emergency. She saw my pack through the trees and snuck up to check on me, heard the pity party I was throwing myself. And I made it to the shelter with her and stayed with her for the rest of the trail.”  


“So, did you get your trail name?”  


“Casey Kasem – you know, American Top 40?” Strand breathes out a chuckle as he packs up their trash.  


“Well, thankfully it wasn’t Rush Limbaugh.” Alex knocks her shoulder into his, snorting out a laugh into the remains of her lunch. Strand hitches farther up the rocks and helps her down onto the trail.  


They strap into their packs and head down the hill, quiet for a few thousand feet until Strand asks, “Are you still in contact with her?” Alex shakes her head, and when he glances over, he sees a familiar glaze over her eyes.  


“Not really. Gillian – she and I… got together on the trail, but we knew it was never going to last, be a long-distance thing. I was going back to Seattle, she was going back to Tallahassee.” She shrugs, her pack bouncing up and down as she does. “It was college, but she was my first real love, you know?”  


“I know,” Strand echoes. She lets the moment hover between them.  


“But Gillian didn’t want to come up north because of the snow, and I wasn’t going to move to _Florida_.” She all but spits out the last word, coaxing that familiar chuckle out of Strand once more.

\-----

“What about _Die Hard_?”  


“No.”  


“ _Ghostbusters_?”  


“Someone claimed they captured a ghost inside a container, similar to the trap used in the movie. So, in order to build my argument, I had to… entertain theirs.”  


“So, that’s a yes.”  


“Yes.”  


“Um, _Forrest Gump_?”  


“Yes. But only because I took Charlie to see it.”  


“ _Citizen Kane_?”  


“You go from a Tom Hanks movie to the one of the greatest movies of all time?”  


“Does that mean you’ve seen it?”  


“No. I fell asleep the day we watched it in film class.”  


“ _You_ took a film class.”  


“Don’t look so surprised. It was undergrad, I had to take an elective. It was either that or intro to painting.”  


“I can see you with an easel.”  


“Ah, no.”  


“Yeah, take away those three-piece suits and replace them with a billowy, white button-down and some stained jeans. You’d painting something like… Rorschach tests but with an interesting twist. You’d have a whole series called Apophenia. Oh, and the Institute could be your gallery! You’d be like a Freudian Bob Ross.”  


“Freud was a man who thought he was right about everything, and that his findings would stand the test of time. And yet, nothing beside remains. Most of his teachings were thrown out because most of it was wholly incorrect.”  


“Hmm.”  


“I’m hiking in the remote wilderness of Idaho looking for Sasquatch. I think that makes me much more receptive to alternate ideas than Freud.”  


“Fair. Okay, what about _Groundhog Day_?”  


“I grew up twenty minutes from Punxsutawney – what do you think?”

\-----

Strand gets backpack babysitting duty when they reach Tremont Falls that afternoon. While Alex asks for interviews from the people that trickle in behind them, he relaxes on a downed tree. Mist settles on his skin, a relief from the heat. The solid rock of the mountain towers above eighty feet or so, the water crashing over to pool and swirl at the base, before rushing underneath a wooden footbridge and continuing into the valley.  


He watches Alex snap photos, chatting amicably with one family and then the other. Within a few minutes, they cluster around her as she moves them away from the roar of the falls. She starts firing off questions, the hand not holding the recorder fluttering and gesturing as she talks. Put Alex Reagan in a room with anyone and she’ll get them to talk. There’s something she projects, something more than just a good education and journalistic talent. He heard it over the phone, in those eleven voicemails she left.  


It’s probably why he avoided her for so long; he’d known on some level that this wouldn’t be just a short feature story in an _All Things Considered_ segment. When they’re both dry-eyed and strung out from watching hours of shaky cam footage of poorly-lit seances and unexplained figures, he’ll ask Alex to stay the night. And then he’ll hear her nightmares from across the house.  


He sometimes wishes he never agreed to that initial interview.  


And he wonders if Alex can tell. If she knows that he regrets being curious in this woman that received ten veritable cold-shoulders and came back for an eleventh. That he agreed to continue working with her because of the reach she has that he can’t get with a Twitter account and the occasional book deal. That he wants answers more than he wants her to be safe, sometimes.  


Well, wanted. Maybe. He’s still not sure what he wants, now.  


If there’s one thing that’s for certain, it’s that he knows what Alex wants and it doesn’t involve her backing down, moving off the hard questions. Some days, though, he desperately wishes that he’ll open his inbox to that email, telling him that the show is cancelled, that she’s moving on, that she wants to pursue the rest of her odd jobs podcast and wants nothing more to do with these black tapes of his.  


When he was in Italy visiting Charlie for all those months, he sent Alex photos over email. The tourist-packed sidewalks of the via del Corso, the view from an outdoor café in the Piazza Navona, a shot of the Uffizi’s interior from a weekend trip to Florence. Whenever Charlie had a day off and didn’t know what to do with him, she dragged him out into the city, as if espresso and Botticelli could fill the awkward silence.  


Alex replied to every email, sometimes with an emoji with hearts for eyes at the scenery, once with a suggestion for “some restaurant near the Colosseum” – of which there were over forty – that her cousin recommended. He emailed back that he’d look into it, anyway.  


He sent just one photo of himself, standing with Charlie on the rim of Mount Vesuvius, the city of Naples spread out behind them. Alex’s reply was there when he checked his email two days later: 

_From: areagan@pnwsradio.com  
To: strandinstitute@gmail.com  
Re: Weekend trip to Naples  
_

_You look happy. I’m glad.  
_

_P.S. Let interns know you’re alive and well in Italy (they’ve been worried about you). They’re now asking when I’m going to get that quintessential Leaning Tower of Pisa pic._

He reminded her that Pisa wasn’t on the to-do list, being a four-hour ride north from where Charlie lived in Rome. In lieu of replying, she sent a new email – with _Blame the interns!_ as the subject line – containing an image of him, the one taken under false pretenses for a second look at his black tapes collection, photoshopped to appear as if he’s propping up the famous tower with his shoulder.  


A few more filled Strand’s inbox, all botched attempts at inserting him into popular supernatural media: he’s in the background of the movie poster for _Ghostbusters_ , he’s sitting at a desk in front of a poster that says I Want To Believe, he’s holding a can of spray paint in front of another movie that now reads _Paranormal Apophenia_. The last one showed him as the fifth member of a ghost hunting show, posing next to a man that he’s positive he’s gotten into an argument with over Twitter before. And, since it was the interns’ doing, the images all wound up posted onto the previously-mentioned platform. Charlie asked him later what he’d been reading to cause him to have such a dumb, lovesick look on his face. He brushed away the question, not wanting to admit that he’d been reading through Alex’s replies to the photos.  


As wonderful as it was spending time with his daughter after nearly two decades, his thoughts couldn’t help but occasionally (correction: often) travel five thousand miles west. Meandering through the city, he imagined taking Alex along the same routes, showing her his favorite places in person rather than through the screen of her phone. He thought of strolling together inside the castle on Ischia and ducking into an alcove to hide from the tour group; thought of pressing her up against the cool stone in that red summer dress of hers and kissing along the line of her neck, sitting her down on a display table and hiking up her dress and listening to her muffled cries. Thoughts that he had no right to think about with someone twenty years younger than he, but thoughts that persisted him through his time in Italy.  


And while he was away, Strand worried. He knew that Nic was working on another show that Alex had limited involvement with. That during the downtime from her podcast, Alex would be digging at the Order of the Ceonophus, Warren, and all the other missing pieces to their ever-expanding puzzle. So, he emailed Nic every few weeks, inquiring if Alex had managed to find anything.  


Nic was a smart man, though, and capable of reading between the lines. He’d reply that nothing new had surfaced, but Alex was busy with producer duties and that he was making sure she was catching up on sleep.  


Strand snaps out of his thoughts when one couple breaks off and returns to their spot next to the falls; the other stays with Alex. The man raises a flat hand above his head and the woman shakes her head, reaching up and tugging his hand down a few inches. As she does, she drops the leash and their dog races off, first toward the other couple and then over the bridge to him, bounding into his lap. He grabs the leash to keep the dog from leaping into the water. The couple starts to rush over, but he waves away their concerned looks. Alex wraps up the interview and they cross over to retrieve the pup.  


“Oh!” The woman pulls her phone out. “Would you mind taking a picture of us?” Alex obliges, snapping a few quick shots, before handing the phone back. “I could take one for you, if you’d like.”  


He’s maneuvered into position next to Alex, who slides her hand across his lower back, tugging him close. Her palm is warm against the chilled, sweat-drenched fabric of his T-shirt. Wrapping an arm around her, his hand cups her sun-pinkened shoulder. The woman manages to take a single photo before the gray clouds above open up. She squeals at the downpour and hands the camera off into Alex’s waiting hands, then follows the man and the other couple across the bridge. They shout their goodbyes before disappearing around the bend.  


Spotting a short overhang in the rock wall, Strand shoves their packs underneath it. He urges Alex under so she can secure her electronics, half-heartedly protesting when she tugs him under with her. They huddle together to watch the thick sheets of rain come down, turning the trail to gritty muck. Using the time to review the day’s photos, Alex tilts the camera’s screen so he can see as she scrolls, deleting the blurry or overexposed ones. She reaches the photo of them and seems pleased at the quality of it.  


“Are you,” he clears his throat and continues to ask, “going to post that on the website, too?”  


“No, this’ll be – oh, no I’m not posting this online, look at my hair. I have Lieutenant Dan’s sea legs hairdo.”  


“What – oh. I suppose.”  


“It’s still a good photo, though, right?”  


“Yes, it is.”

\-----

They let the afternoon sun bake the ground for a few hours before they set up their tents, spending the time cooking dinner and eating it under the rainfly that Alex rigs up to act as a shade. A herd of deer pass through, their eyes warily watching the two as they move out of the trees to graze. Strand can tell Alex is itching to go for her camera. After a few minutes, one of the deer perks up and scurries back into the tree line. The others follow, their white tails bobbing in between the trees as they disappear.  


“I called your best friend on Tuesday,” Alex says, apropos of nothing. The red light of her recorder blinks at her side. He takes the bait.  


“My best friend.”  


“Emily Dumont.” Alex giggles at his eye-roll. “To be fair, she declined my call, but she did send me an email on her opinion about Bigfoot.”  


“And?” Alex can’t help but let her lips curl up into a grin.  


“It seems you two have something in common now. She doesn’t believe any such creature could exist.” Strand scoffs.  


“Why would she? A bipedal, hairy man-ape is much more plausible and grounded in reality than anything she can cook up at a supposedly-haunted credit union. She’d have a better chance proving Bigfoot than that old man she claimed to see.”  


“You know, scientists are still finding new species of animals, even now,” Alex says. He can’t help but chuckle at her argument.  


“I sincerely doubt your sasquatch is hiding in the Mariana Trench or in a remote bog in Aberdeen.”  


“What about the Himalayan Mountains? Yetis have been reported there for hundreds of years.”  


“Stories of the yeti only gained traction once Western explorers started stomping around the East's untraversed mountains. And none of those stories ever came to any fruition. I'm not one to entertain people who claim to see paranormal events after taking a bong rip, what makes you think mountain climbers suffering from altitude sickness can be trusted?”  


Alex’s lips twitch to one side, as if in thought.  


“There are photographs of the encounters. It’s not just word of mouth.”  


“Photographs of footprints in the snow. In habitats where animals exist.” He levels a look at her. “Truly astounding.”  


“I don’t know. People can still make the argument that since we haven't explored every inch of land, we can't rule anything out. The poles haven't been completely explored.”  


“Then why aren't we there trying to track down Bigfoot instead?”  


“I don't think Arctic exploration is in the budget.”

\-----

Tugging her knotted hair out of its bun, Alex runs a hand over the greasy strands. She contemplates a bath while she tidies up camp, weighing another easy but dissatisfying baby wipe bath against the freezing but refreshing river. Or she could follow Strand’s lead and take a nap to catch up on some much-needed sleep. Though she’d prefer not to wander around in the dark later tonight after a fresh round of nightmares.  


Still, a cold bath would do her wonders.  


She’s always liked it when Strand forgoes shaving, when he lets that handsome face fill out a little more than his usual scruff. Now, she gets to watch him haul firewood around with a thick stubble, showing off those muscles she knows he works on – the man has his own personal gym equipment in his house, for Christ’s sake. And the loose flannel shirts he wears around camp have fueled more than one lumberjack fantasy of hers. She thought taking Strand out into the wilderness would be easy, that he’d be dousing himself with hand-sanitizer around every corner, hole up inside of his tent to keep away from nature.  


Now, she watches him nap on a blanket beside the fire, his head propped up on his arm while a few ants take a detour across his bare feet. The gray T-shirt he wears stretches pleasantly across his wide shoulders and the planes of his chest, where it pulls slightly with each breath he takes.  


A cold bath would do her very well, indeed.  


Decision made, she scribbles a note to Strand and leaves it tacked on top of the fire ring with a cup. Because if she wakes him, then she might invite him with her and, try as she might, she can’t think of how that will end with them remaining the ‘good work colleagues/friends who do not fuck each other on work trips’ that they are. Which is how she should want it to stay (but my, how the honest, red-blooded part of her doesn’t).  


The river is high from the recent rains. Slick rocks break up the flat stretch of dark green water. She picks her way along the shore, bag thumping against her side, until she finds the perfect spot. A ring of rocks spreads out from the shore, breaking up the current and creating a decent wading pool. After checking the area for snakes and giving a cursory glance for other hikers, she sets her bag down and starts peeling off her T-shirt. 

  


When Strand wakes, there’s a flash of disappointment when he doesn’t spot Alex. A glance at her closed tent reveals everything quiet inside. She couldn’t have gone far, though, he reckons – the fire is still full of hot coals. An empty cup lays in the dirt next to the fire; he brushes it clean and sets it back atop the rock.  


He stretches up from the campfire and surveys the area, concluding that she probably went out for a bathroom break. Deciding that he’ll do something nice – and to get out of her hair to have a bit more of the evening to herself – he grabs their water bottles and heads for the river.

  


The water is cold. Really fucking cold, actually. Alex guesses it must be below sixty degrees. She wiggles her toes in the hot, gritty sand and debates her options. Diving in all at once seems the speediest choice, but she made that mistake once before as a teenager, and the shock of cold lake water nearly caused her to drown. She’d rather not be included in the annual statistic of people who drown in public parks.  


Slow and low it is, then. Alex steps into the water, letting her ankles and calves adjust to the temperature before inching further. Water swirls around her knees and thighs as she awkwardly squats and wades in to her hips. Her abdominal muscles tense. Squeezing her eyes tight, she squeaks as the water slaps against her hip and splashes onto her naked torso.  


“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” Alex hisses, digging her feet into the riverbed to see if the sand will keep her feet warm. It works, to some extent. However, it also displaces the rocks suctioned to the shore’s clay. She sways against the current and, fearing another splash, pulls a foot up to step on a rock. Which slides from its hold and into the river, Alex following with a shout as her upper half tips backward, the ice-cold water closing over her. 

  


The pleasant white noise of the river is drowned out by a scream. Strand drops the bottles and crashes out of the trees, scanning the river as he runs. Clothes lie on the shore, the blue Yale sweatshirt among them. There’s a light blur in the water and he sprints towards it.  


Alex plants a hand into the slimy clay and pushes off, breaking the surface and sucking in a breath. A noise from behind her makes her spin and see Strand skidding to a stop in the sand, chest heaving, eyes lit up with concern. Recalling her current state of undress, she lets out a strangled squeak and slaps an arm across her breasts, hunkering down so just her head bobs above the waterline.  


“Are you all right?” He asks.  


“Fine – just slipped.” She digs into the clay, but the river washes the silt clouds downstream before it can conceal much. Strand seems to take note of the clothes on the shore for the first time, because he turns sharply, almost overbalancing, and proceeds to stammer at the distant tree line.  


“I came down to get water and I heard you scream and,” he clears his throat twice before uttering a phrase she swears she’s never heard him say, “um.” Affection pulses through her, a pleasant warmth spreading through her cheeks at his obvious embarrassment.  


“You didn’t see my note by the fire?” She teases.  


“Ah there – there wasn’t a note. I wouldn’t have come down if I’d known you would be….” He trails off.  


“Naked?” She suggests.  


“Bathing,” he corrects and clears his throat again. “Which I’ll – um—let you get back to. I’m going to head upriver and filter some water for us.”  


He nods to himself and starts back toward the trees. She mulls over calling out to tease him that she’ll be a while, since she forgot her towel and will have to sun-dry. The man looks so mortified, though – even while he’s the one that got to play the knight in shining armor while she tried to drown herself in four feet of water. So, she keeps mum and waits, bobbing with the current, until he disappears upriver.

\-----

After trekking around for three hours with the recorder, Alex gives in to the late hour and calls it a night. Strand voices his agreement with the decision as he tightens the strap on the game camera. She curses, wincing at the bright beam of his flashlight as he joins her back on the trail. Blinking at the spots marring her vision, she waves him off to start the return trip back and follows, keeping out of range of his poor flashlight etiquette.  


This low in the valley, the temperature should be close to comfortable, but Alex finds herself flexing her fingers and stuffing her free hand into her jacket pocket. Cold night air tickles at the loose strands that curl against her exposed neck; a shiver runs through her chest and down her spine as the wind picks up. Parts of the trail are still soaked from the midday rain. She tries her best to keep out of the black muck to avoid the nasty, wet sucking sound when she lifts her boots free. Dark silhouettes of the branches and leaves rustle from above; through the canopy, there’s only the faintest pinpricks of stars.  


And somewhere behind them – somewhere close – a branch snaps.  


The sound is hearty. Alex can hear the individual splinters of wood splitting. She spins on her heel, scanning the tree trunks and underbrush futilely. No yellow eyes leap out at her. The flashlight beam wobbles with the shake of her hand. Below her, she can hear Strand continue the descent to the switchbacks they’ve come upon. His boots crunch steadily against the earth. She wants to call out to him, even inhales and opens her mouth to do so, when she hears a low whistle arc out of the trees to her right.  


Her body freezes, every muscle tightening as panic flutters in her chest. A breeze brushes through and with it comes the whistle again, still soft, still that same high-low pitch, but closer now. She sweeps the dark woods with the flashlight, but she’s not able to see whatever exists beyond the wall of fogged darkness at the end of the beam.  


On cue, distant yapping howls filter down the hillside, the noises light enough that she can’t pinpoint a location. A coyote or three, chattering to each other from farther up the mountain. Chalking up the whistling to the wind, she picks up the pace to a light jog, the beam jostling on the trail ahead. Three switchbacks below her, Strand’s flashlight bobs merrily along and she quickens to catch up. Annoyance at being left in the dust pulses through her, superseding the uneasiness.  


Something whistles again, slow and deliberate.  


She skids to a stop, willing the rocks and twigs to quiet as they skitter along the trail. The forest is still, with no cold breeze to explain it away. Her grip clenches around the flashlight; the batteries inside rattle.  


The whistle grows louder, the pitches drawn-out, as if it’s teasing her. The faint scent of rot tickles her nose, reminds her of playing near the lake as a kid and finding a dead beaver, the body bloated as maggots ate at the caved-in skull. White-blue light slices at the tree trunks and brushwood, thick shadows growing as she sweeps the beam across, squinting at the darkness.  


Something moves; the black on the edge of the beam uncurls, stretching upwards to form a humanoid shape. The light drops, plastic cracking against a rock. The beam arches across the ground, illuminating the blades of grass at her feet. The figure moves in the shadows, blacker than the dark silhouettes of the tree trunks; twigs snap as it whistles again. Alex inches her head up to take in the hulking form, her hand swiping at the air to steady herself as a wave of vertigo pushes at her. She falls back onto the trail. Cold mud slides up into her shirt and runs wet fingers along her back, pebbles like nails scraping at her skin; nausea bubbles up in her throat, hot and bitter.  


The figure lumbers toward her, movement stilted like a puppet on strings, the fallen light illuminating the white of its face – no, it’s a skull, the eye sockets hollow, the nasal bone long and narrow. Bone-white antlers brush at the low-hanging branches, its arms like blackened, dried corn stalks fastened together with crumbling, yellowed sinew, mismatched bones twined together for hands that scrape against bark as it heaves through the trees towards her, the tall grass hissing against its spindly legs. Its limbs creak, splintering apart as they stretch and retract. It leans out of the tree cover and over the trail, the mouth splitting open in a grin as it whistles again; that syrupy scent of decay washes over her, crawling into her open mouth, and she gags, gasping for air around the putrid, choking stench.  


Clutching at the mud, she sinks her fingers in and crawls, rocks cutting at her knees as she tries to scramble up. She opens her mouth to cry for help, when something reaches up through her throat and pulls her scream back down, gripping and squeezing the air from her lungs. The pitch-darkness that surrounds her flickers, obscuring the edges of her vision.  


“Alex?” Strand’s voice calls out from far below, that dot of white-blue light of his making its way back up the path, back to her.  


_Strand._ She’d forgotten she wasn’t alone out here in the forest.  


“AAaaleex.” It mimics, but its voice is wrong, the vowels drawn out and the pitch too high, then too low, as if someone’s jerking a volume dial back and forth. Its fingers clink, dry and brittle against her ear, before they curl around a chunk of her hair.  


It yanks, hard, pain scorching across her scalp as it drags her backwards to the trees.  


A spike of panic drives through her. Alex tightens her shoulders and throws her head forward, fighting to get loose, her hands sliding in the mud until she finds purchase and jerks herself free. Scrambling for a fallen branch, her hand closes around it and she twists, swinging at its hand. There’s a sickening crunch as it howls, guttural and staticky and inhuman, the pitch lurching as the twined bones of its hand crack and fall, clinking as they hit the ground. It staggers back, folding itself back into the black void that hovers just beyond the tree line.  


The tightness in her throat eases and she sucks in a greedy breath.  


Bright light eclipses her vision as Strand drops down in front of her. Alex rushes to grab at him, to put him behind her. He grips her shoulders, hard enough to bruise.  


“What happened, Alex, what’s wrong!?” Strand demands, his brows pinched with concern, eyes bright with alarm. He cups her face with one large hand, urging her to look at him, his thumb sweeping wet streaks across her face. She hadn’t realized she was crying. Squirming to see over his shoulder, she sees that the figure is gone, and the pile of bones along with it.  


Strand twists to look behind him, just in time to see something large moving away through the underbrush. His light is too weak, though, and whatever it is gets lost in the forest’s shadows. Not wanting to wait and see if it decides to come back, he gathers Alex and her fallen flashlight and ushers her up, keeping a hold on her as he hurries down the trail. His attempts to ask her if she’s hurt go unanswered.  


He settles her down near the firepit when they reach camp, draping a blanket over her and pushing a water bottle into her hands. She takes small sips at his behest, her gaze darting across the far tree line.  


“Did you see it?”  


“See what?” He glances back at her from where he’s getting the fire started.  


“Don’t be—” she bites at her lip, aggravation flashing in her dark eyes, “—I – I know you saw it, you had to, it was leaving but you—”  


“Alex.”  


“—no, don’t – you turned around, you had to see it.” Sparks flare in her wide, panicked eyes. He keeps his tone easy and level, as if he’s talking to an injured animal.  


“I didn’t see anything. I heard a large animal, moving off when your screams and my light scared it off.”  


“It wasn’t an animal and I wasn’t screaming.”  


“Yes, it was and yes, you were,” he corrects her but in that gentle tone he adopts when he’s trying to calm her down. It pisses her off. “It was probably a bear, it must’ve smelled dinner on our clothes and come—”  


“It wasn’t a fucking bear,” she interrupts. “It was a – it was….” She drops the bottle to dig the heel of her hand into her forehead, her fingers trembling as they run through her hair. “It was going to take me – I – I don’t know where, I just… I’m just so tired of this, of all of this.”  


Tears prickle at her eyes and she swipes at them before any can make an appearance. The grinning skull leers at her from behind her closed eyelids.  


“Sleep deprivation can have a wide range of effects, as I’m sure you’re aware of. If your gamma-aminobutyric acid levels are low, it can lead to impaired judgement and hallucinations.” Alex groans, cutting off his lecture.  


“You don’t have to use your psychobabble on me. I have a sleep therapist; I’m not some crackpot reaching out to people on Yahoo Answers for professional help.”  


“I don’t know what that means. Alex, look at me,” Strand orders. She glares at the blanket on her lap instead. He sighs and sits back in the dirt with her, pulling her against his chest. “You’re safe. Nothing is going to hurt you, nothing is going to take you anywhere. I’ve got you.”  


His breath ruffles her hair as he speaks. Her shoulders loosen in his grip and she heaves out a breath. There’s a brief pressure against the crown of her head that she bites her lip at, shifting closer into his embrace. “I’ve got you, and you’ve got me. Right?”  


Her voice is small when she answers, but steadier than she thought possible, “Yes.”  


“Good.”

\-----

As the ceiling of her tent lightens, Alex decides to give up the three-hour endeavor to catch another hour of sleep.  


Tucking her socked feet into sandals and wrapping up in a blanket, she slips out of the tent and circles the camp until she finds a break in the trees to watch the sunrise. To the northeast, the mountains are hulking shapes of dark blue, their ridges and peaks dusted orange by the rising sun. Alex settles in and watches the sky lighten; coral, lilac, and marigold glow against the sparse cloud cover. Under the morning bird calls, faint snores sound from Strand’s tent.  


Mount Hísemtuks, their final stop of the trek, hides behind the treetops. She thinks back to her conversation with Brenshaw three days ago, when she told him their hiking plan, and he informed her that _hísemtuks_ stood for both sun and moon in the Nimiipuu language.  


The legend tied to the mountain was that Sun was a brave warrior and the Moon was a beautiful woman and, though they loved each other, their families forbid them to be together. They planned to meet on the crags of the mountain high above their village, but when the warrior came up, the woman was not there. In her excitement, the woman had come the night before, but fell to her death and was carried away by the river below. Each day the warrior came back, hoping she would appear, but had to return each night to his family. Due to her tragic death, the woman’s spirit was not put to rest, and she would climb up the mountain each night to watch over her love.  


It is, like most other legends about lovers she’s heard, a sad one. Alex makes a mental note to research it when she’s got a decent internet connection, though she expects she won’t find much of anything aside from an inaccurate recount on someone’s blog. _Much like every other legend_ , she thinks to herself, as she watches the vivid colors recede and give over to the blue of the day.  


Her thoughts drift to Strand, as they often do. She can’t help but think of him as the man from the legend, spending years missing Coralee, thinking and fearing the worst. What it must be like to have been missing someone for longer than you knew them, what hearing her voice on that recording and then seeing, feeling, knowing she was alive must’ve been like.  


Alex has the last voicemail from her dad saved to her phone. She transfers it over with each upgrade. It’s an ordinary message: 

_“Hey kiddo, it’s Dad. Wanting to see if you’re still coming up next weekend. Your brother is wanting to try for the lake. Forecast shows sunny, so it’ll be snowing by Friday, ‘course. Anyway, call me when you get a chance. Love you, bye.”_

It’s been seven years and she listens to it every year on his birthday, cradles her phone and plays it on repeat. A heart attack; sad, but not unheard of for a man in his early seventies.  


It’s hard to imagine what Strand must’ve done, sitting alone in his house, watching home movies and listening to Coralee’s audio tapes. Trying to piece together a reason for her disappearance and gradually giving up on the search when each avenue proved fruitless. Not having that peace of mind for two decades, only for Coralee to appear out of thin air and then walk away again. Especially now that Strand knows if he had pushed a little bit harder, had asked a few more of the right questions, that he might’ve found her long before last year.  


Alex can’t imagine what that does to a person.  


She hasn’t asked him to go into detail about what Coralee told him in that rental home, though she desperately wants to. Knowing Strand, he’s not the type to eventually cave and tell her. For a man who seeks the truth, he certainly is excellent at keeping it from her.

\-----

“How are your listeners going to feel when there’s no demons or cultists in this episode? I’m pretty sure a sasquatch doesn’t fit either criteria.”  


“You know my podcast wasn’t always going to be about your tapes, right? And you seem to not understand the meaning of a filler episode. It’ll be nice, to have a break from the never-ending cult conspiracies.”  


They’re nearly four miles in to the eight-mile hike. If they can reach the summit by noon, Alex is hoping to spend an hour or two up there for lunch and playing Bigfoot hunter, then hike the five miles down to the trailhead’s parking lot, where she’ll give Brenshaw a ring to taxi them back to the station.  


“I’d understand if – well, if you need a longer break from… all of it,” Strand says, his eyes downcast as he watches his feet eat up the trail.  


“I took a two-month break last year, didn’t seem to do any good.” She lets out a self-deprecating chuckle. Strand glances over at her with that worried gaze of his that’s become increasingly familiar on this trip (and, if she’s honest, the past year). He opens his mouth to say something, but she cuts him off as they round the bend.  


“Shit.”  


The trail is a wreck. An uprooted pine lays across what’s left of the path, most of it washed away down the hillside, creating a yawning gap of rusty clay and tangled roots spans almost twenty feet across. An orange mesh fence blocks off the destruction. Zip-tied to the fence and fluttering in the wind is a laminated paper dated the day prior: 

_Due to trail erosion, access to Mt Hísemtuks trail has been rerouted through Sage Creek until further notice. Please exercise caution when river trekking if rain is forecasted.  
When in doubt: TURN AROUND, DON’T DROWN! _

Underneath the notice is an arrow pointing down the hillside, where a makeshift trail leads down to the glistening creek below.  


Alex shares a glance with Strand. “Well.”  


“Yes, well.”  


“Your boots – are they waterproof?”  


“I’m not sure they’re _river-trekking-proof_ , but they should be fine.”  


Sage Creek, being an offshoot of Kirtley River, isn’t too difficult to traverse; the creek is barely two feet deep and spans ten feet across. Alex still wishes that she thought to bring trekking poles when she spies Strand swaying in a loose foothold. She sticks close to him, but if he notices, he says nothing.  


A quarter mile in, the wide canyon on either side closes in on them, the rocks and shrubs falling away, replaced by sheer rock walls. The entrance is marked by a thirty-foot waterfall that they bypass via a ladder, bolted down into the canyon walls.  


Shafts of mid-morning sunlight pour into the slot canyon. The rugged walls stretch upwards a hundred feet or so, with the occasional gap in the walls revealing pockets of crumbled rock and silt that form an incline to the canyon’s rim. A patchwork of colors – deep yellow, light orange, tawny brown – glows in the sunlight. Green splotches of moss coat the walls near the waterline, damp and slimy when they brush their hands against it. After a mile or so, the canyon walls recede and the creek rejoins the original trail. It’s another four miles to the summit, grueling only for the near-constant uphill climb.  


Alex thinks that she should forgive the hike’s reviews that she spent the way up mentally cursing at – _Trust me, the view is worth it!_ and _Incredible view of eastern Idaho, truly breathtaking!_ – because they were all correct: the view is astounding.  


The summit, sitting at 10,136 feet, gives a panoramic view of the surrounding valleys and ranges. Being this high, the town of Ridgedale is visible in the distance, the right angles of the buildings a sharp contrast to the rolling mountains that stretch out as far as they can see. Trees fall in olive-green curtains down the slopes and collect in the bowl of the valley; rocky, gray spines of the mountains cut into the light blue sky. Alpine lakes, glinting in the sun, dot the landscape; Kirtley River flashes intermittently through the trees, the white rapids like clouds against its surface. The slot canyon they traversed is a dark snake against the earth.  


According to the interpretive sign Alex reads, on a clear day Borah Peak – Idaho’s tallest mountain – is visible; she squints due south but can only see the vague, dark blue smudges of the distant mountains.  


“Wow,” Strand says, his hands at his hips as he takes in the view. Alex switches on her camera and snaps photos in quick succession, wanting to capture the way the sun slices against the mountainsides in the distance. She briefs him on the number of sightings that have been recorded from here, pointing to areas with thin clusters of trees where Bigfoot has been spotted.  


He lets her continue, more for the sake of the recording. They debate back and forth about his claim that the sightings are nothing more than a supernatural availability cascade bias, that people are seeing Bigfoot because they expect to. If the arguing occurs over a shared lunch of beef jerky and trail mix, then the audience needn’t know.  


They spend far longer on the summit than planned, enjoying the brisk mountain wind and the warmth of the sun. Alex dutifully keeps an eye open on the wilderness around them, while Strand leans against the rock next to her and stretches out, reminding her of a cat sunning itself. When she asks him if he wants to start heading back, he shrugs. Alex leans back to join him, giving up on spotting their elusive cryptid.  


“It has been nice,” she says, “getting away from the city.” Strand hums his agreement, his eyes closed behind his sunglasses. “I’m glad you came.”  


His head rolls to the side, and though she can’t see his eyes now, she knows that they’re open, looking at her. His lips curve into a gentle smile.  


“Me too.”  


A bead of sweat rolls down from his temple to skim along his jawline, the gray in his beard pleasing against his tanned skin, evidence of their excursion. Alex sucks in a breath and shifts her gaze back to the wilderness beyond them. Strand murmurs her name and moves to sit up, but she puts a hand on his shoulder.  


“We need to go.”  


Strand’s eyebrows raise in alarm. “Why, what’s wrong?”  


She motions to the cluster of slate-gray clouds to the northwest, hovering on the horizon. This high, they can see the haze of rain that seems to stretch a mile-wide. Alex packs her equipment up into a dry bag and shoves it into her pack, Strand moving to help her strap in before sliding his own pack on.  


The dark clouds are lingering a few miles north by the time they make it back to the creek. The water is murky, tinged a light brown. After a shared glance, they decide to risk it, and Alex follows a few feet behind Strand as they splash through the creek. Low thunder rumbles in the distance. The wind picks up, whistling through the canyon. Alex bristles at the unsettling feeling in her spine.  


Something rough smacks against her leg.  


Alex yelps in surprise and twists around to see a tree limb bobbing along. More debris rushes towards them from upstream. She shares a look with Strand and they pick up the pace.  


Storm clouds roll overhead, darkening the canyon and making Alex wish for the headlamp that’s shoved somewhere in her pack. Thunder cracks and echoes across the rock walls. Panic courses through her when she can no longer see the moss on the walls.  


A gurgling noise makes Alex whip her head around to see a wave of water surging towards them. She shouts Strand’s name and catches his arm, her nails digging into his skin. They scramble to seek cover behind some boulders, but the water is too fast. Strand pushes Alex behind the rocks and takes the brunt of the wave. He stumbles to regain his footing, his ankle twisting as he does. Cursing, he catches himself against the large rocks where Alex pushes out of cover to help him.  


“What happened?”  


“Ankle.”  


“Can you–” Alex hesitates, shoving her wet hair out of her eyes. Another crack of thunder sounds from above. “We need to get to higher ground.”  


“I know.” Strand eases his full weight onto his ankle; his teeth grind at the pain. “Think it’s just a sprain.”  


He steps out into the current and offers a hand to Alex, his stomach tightening with dread when he sees the water coming up to her abdomen. They move together, water smacking and churning against them. Lightning flares across the sky above, drenching the canyon in a frost-white light before the darkness returns. Sharp pellets of rain begin to fall.  


“There!” Alex shouts over a peal of thunder. Strand follows her finger to a break in the wall up ahead. He forges ahead, his grip tight around her arm, until they reach the break. The river tugs at them, pushing them downstream. Strand fights against it and reaches for the edge of the wall.  


“Climb up!” He shouts at Alex, pushing her forward to the incline.  


She shakes her head. “I’m too short – you go first and pull me up.”  


His jaw clenches in frustration. The water is up to her chest now, though. He doesn’t have time to argue.  


Alex hangs on to the wall’s edge as Strand finds a foothold and starts to climb. He scales a few feet, hands protesting at the sharp bite of the rocks. He twists to stretch out his hand.  


Alex unclips her pack and hands it up to him instead.  


Strand shakes his head. “No, I’m not–”  


“I can’t climb up with it on.”  


“Alex, if you can’t – just let it go!”  


“I’m not letting–”  


A wave of water slaps against her, now reaching her shoulders. Webs of lightning burst across the sky. She shakes the backpack at him.  


“Just take the damn thing!” Strand takes it and climbs up to toss it on top of the rim, shedding his own pack as he does. He descends back down the slope to return to her.  


Alex takes his hand and heaves up out of the water. Her boots skid along the rocky incline until she steadies herself. Once she’s settled, Strand lets go so she can continue up. Alex reaches for a jutting rock to pull herself up.  


It comes away in her hand.  


She falls, shouting, digging her fingers in but can’t find any purchase; she throws a foot out to stop herself but she’s too short to catch against the wall. The dark, icy river closes over her head. The current knocks her against the rocks in the creek bed. Hugging one tightly, Alex breaks the surface to suck in a lungful of air. Water rushes against her chin and she fights to keep her nose above the surface.  


“Alex!” She glances up to see Strand rushing back down to help her. Wedging a boot in between the rocks, she scrambles up to reach his outstretched hand. Another rush of water slams against her, tossing her against the rock wall. Her temple smacks against the edge, the world around her going gray as she gasps at the pain.  


“Grab my hand!” Strand shouts at her.  


Alex lunges up. Their fingers brush.  


Her boot slips from its hold.  


The water seizes her and drags her down. Her knees knock against the boulders. She reaches out for them, but they slip from her grasp.  


The current tosses her like a rag doll; branches and other debris cut at her legs. The riverbed beats against her back, rocks smack against her ribs. Her lungs strain for oxygen as she fights against the reflex to gasp at the cold. Shoving off the riverbed, she struggles to the surface and gasps for air. Deafening cracks of thunder shake the canyon trapping her. A muddy haze coats her eyes, the world around her dim and blurry. She blinks rapidly, dispelling the water’s nasty film. The precious few seconds give her enough time to spot another cluster of boulders coming up on the right.  


Striking out against the current as best as she can, she kicks against the ground to launch herself at the rocks. Throwing her shoulder into a crevice, she tucks behind the large boulder.  


“Alex!” She shields her eyes from the rain, looking up and seeing Strand peering down over the opposite rim’s edge, waving both arms at her.  


“I’m – I’m okay!” Alex shouts back, though she’s not sure if he can hear her. He says something back but to her it’s just faint noise, the churning water drowning him out. Quick flashes of lightning brighten the sky above him. She tries to swallow back the panic that courses through her and keep a level head, though the full-body shivers running through her aren’t helping on that front.  


Turning back, Alex squints downstream. Just before the next bend in the river, there’s another break in the wall. But there are no boulders for her to latch onto when she gets there. She can only hope that the incline’s walls will shield her enough from the flood. If the current is still too strong, then she could get pulled even further downstream, where she and several thousand gallons of water will plummet thirty feet to the river below. And if there’s a way to end up in that drowning statistic, Alex can’t think of anything faster.  


Staying where she’s at will only give the river more time to rise, though. So, without motioning her plan to Strand, Alex pushes herself back into the churning current. She paddles to the left wall, trying to keep her head above the water. She ducks into the break, her chest colliding with the solid rock wall, knocking the wind out of her. A sluice of rainwater pounds against her head and shoulders from above. Alex clings to the chipped wall, fighting against the water that batters her.  


Far above, Strand appears and begins pacing the slope, searching for the best way to get to her. Knowing he’ll come all the way down to rescue her, Alex heaves herself up the wall, planting both feet against it just below the waterline.  


Then she jumps.  


Sharp rocks cut at her hands, but she clings to the steep embankment. She climbs, loose pebbles skittering down as she ascends. A wave of rocks from above shows Strand easing down to help her.  


“Don’t come down!” Alex shouts up. _There’s no sense in both of us drowning today._  


He must hear her because he makes that irritated face of his. And, in true fashion, outright ignores her and continues down. When he’s close enough, he swings down and grabs her outstretched arm. She wraps her hand around his forearm and follows him up, up, until they reach the top. Together, they crawl away from the edge. There’s no time to rest, though, as the thunderstorm rages on around them.  


Alex pushes Strand to his knees, grabs his hand and tugs him up with her. Torrential rain continues to fall as they slide along the muddy ground, heading away from the canyon and down into the valley. With no proper shelters nearby, Alex finds the next best thing: a muddy hole in the forest floor.  


“Get in,” Alex orders and ushers Strand into the depression, “crouch down with your feet close together, tuck your head, cover your ears, and don’t touch anything.”  


Strand looks up at her with wide, panicked eyes as she starts to move off. “No, I – where are you going?”  


“We have to spread out. Can’t take care of each other if we’re both struck by lightning.” Her explanation doesn’t appear to ease his panic, but she can’t linger just to give him reassurances. “I’ll come back to get you when the storm passes.” She leaves him and jogs another hundred feet or so before crouching down in a runoff trench.  


The uncomfortable position takes her back to over a decade ago, when she was hunkered down somewhere along the AT in Pennsylvania, hiding from a storm. Gillian, having been from Fort Lauderdale where thunderstorms were a daily occurrence in the summer, was the one who taught her the ‘lightning position.’ The storm that summer didn’t last long, though – or maybe it did. In her defense, Alex only recalls how scared she’d been of being out in it. And then, later, how they didn’t meet their mile goal that day because they were too busy stripping off their wet clothes and having sex in their tent.  


After another five minutes, the storm above them eases past, though Alex waits another ten just to be safe. Her legs and back protest as she unfurls from the uncomfortable position.  


Strand is where she left him. He perks up when he hears her pushing through the wet underbrush.  


“I think we’re out of the strike zone,” she says in greeting. Strand takes her hand and lets her help him out of the hole. His shirt and pants are caked with mud and leaves. “You look like you’re wearing a homemade ghillie suit.” She waits for the inevitable snarky reply.  


Alex’s breath rushes out of her as Strand’s arms wrap around her like a vice.  


“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice soft and low. She starts to shush him, but he continues, “I couldn’t – I saw you hit your head and then when you went under, I couldn’t find you and I’m...” he trails off, his breath warm against her chilled skin, as he searches for his words, “I’m so very, _very_ glad you’re okay.”  


Her arms come up to circle his waist; he rests his chin on top of her wet hair. The forest drip-dries around them. There’s that familiar pressure against the crown of her head, light and comforting, before Strand pulls back and his hands drop to her arms. His thumbs sweep at the soaked fabric of her shirt.  


“I’m sorry I didn’t check the weather report,” she jokes but he doesn’t smile, just watches her with those careful blue eyes of his. He drops his hands away to readjust his glasses, clearing his throat. “C’mon,” she says, “let’s grab our stuff and find us a way across.”

\-----

According to the map Alex fishes out of her pack, the closest bridge is over ten miles downstream. Although it’s decent, the map isn’t detailed enough to show anything beyond manmade structures and trails. And since they’ve wound up on the other side of the creek, the nearest trail is another nine miles east, and would require a decent amount of bushwhacking to get there. Which wouldn’t be the worst, but her machete is currently tucked away with the rest of her hiking gear that she left in her hall closet, in her house, in Seattle.  


“We could call for help,” Strand offers from above the map he’s holding up for Alex to read. “Nate gave you that satellite phone, didn’t he?” Alex makes a face at his suggestion.  


“I’m not getting carried out of here by search and rescue and becoming a news headline.” She curls her chin close to her chest and drops her voice, “‘ _Bigfoot’s Revenge? Podcaster and Skeptic Stranded During Search._ ’”  


“Flash floods have nothing to do with Bigfoot.”  


“It’s called clickbait, Richard.”  


“Hmm.”  


“Did you like my pun, at least?”  


“I did not.”  


“Good.” Alex grins up at him. He breathes out a chuckle; she’s pleased to hear its return.  


“Well, we were supposed to be picked up this afternoon. Don’t you think Nate will be worried when we don’t call?”  


“Shit. You’re right.”  


Brenshaw answers on the second ring. Alex spends the better part of five minutes convincing him that they’re not dying, then another two minutes being chewed out for taking the creek back when it clearly wasn’t safe to do so. Finally, she gets to speak her peace and let him know that she only called for advice. In the end, he gives her two options: hike another four miles southwest along the creek where it may thin out enough to cross, or hike until they find a decent spot to camp and wait for the floodwater to recede overnight.  


“I vote no on the first one,” Strand mutters.  


“Yeah, I agree. Your ankle…” Alex trails off as she glances down to his boot, to how he leans heavily on the other to take the weight off. He follows her gaze and his eyes widen, as if just now remembering the injury.  


“Right. Of course.”  


“Well, guess that leaves y’all with plan B,” Brenshaw says from the phone’s speaker. “Kirtley’s not floodin’ too bad right now, so I’d say Sage Creek’ll be down by early mornin’. As long as y’all have enough supplies to last until tomorrow, shouldn’t be a problem.”  


Strand shrugs in response to Alex’s questioning look, so she takes that as agreement.  


“We’ll see you in the morning, then, Nate.”

\-----

“Do you know what you’re doing?”  


“Yes. Now quit being such a baby.”  


“I’m not–”  


“You are,” Alex corrects, those dark eyes flashing up at Strand before she returns to her task. “There.”  


She sets his bandaged foot down and waves a hand next to it, as if she’s showing it off for Bob Barker to describe. Strand settles back against his pack- _cum_ -makeshift-pillow, stretching his long legs out in front of him as Alex returns to her own pack beside him.  


A decent fire blazes at their feet. Having washed off and finished dinner hours before, they’re content to lay out and watch the evening fall, moving occasionally to feed the fire. The nearby river is muffled by distance, creating a pleasant white noise. It’s a nice change of pace not to rush, to wait on nature to unfold around them. When Strand asked Alex if she was going to hunt Bigfoot tonight, the look he received was a resounding no.  


“As a thank you…” Strand trails off as he twists to dig around in his pack, before pulling out the bottle of whiskey and handing it off to her. Alex doesn’t bother asking when he managed to steal it back.  


“This is why twist tops were invented,” she says with a grin. She turns the bottle in her hands, humming appreciatively at the label before she takes a sip. Flames catch against the glass as she passes it back to Strand, who tips it up, as well. Alex watches the firelight glint in the amber liquid, before spilling down from the bottle and across Strand’s neck. Sucking in a breath, she casts her gaze upwards. The stars above are bright, as if the storm rinsed them clean and made them shine. Strand nudges the bottle closer and she takes it (and another drink).  


“Do you know anything about astronomy?”  


“Do you?” He volleys back.  


“Not really.”  


Strand accepts the whiskey, tags another swig. His eyebrows pinch down as if contemplating.  


“If I wanted to be an ass, I would start naming random constellations off, but I’m too tired to be one right now.”  


Alex shrugs, the movement almost lost in his baggy, blue sweatshirt.  


“At least you’re being honest.”  


He looks thoughtful for a moment.  


“Well, I do know one: Perseus. It’s…” Strand motions vaguely to a small cluster of stars, “somewhere around there.” He cranes his neck, gaze flitting around the night sky to the northeast. “It’s easiest to look for the M shape of Cassiopeia first, since it’s brighter, and just follow down.”  


Alex follows to where his finger is pointing but can’t see anything close to what he’s describing. “Of course, it may be possible that the constellations are only visible in the southern hemisphere this time of year.”  


“You only learned that because it’s your middle name.” It wounds her that Strand wears a look of surprise on his face. She hands the whiskey back. “I’m not some hack with low ratings and high bounce rates. I wouldn’t’ve gotten this far in my career without knowing how to dig a little deeper.”  


“How, if I may ask?”  


“Birth announcement in the local newspaper. Did you know that the Jefferson County Library keeps an archive of the Summerville Daily Times since 1923? Richard Perseus Strand, born November 21, 1960. Right on the cusp of Scorpio and Sagittarius, huh?”  


Strand rolls his eyes at the astrology, taking a long pull of the whiskey.  


“I have to say,” Alex continues, pursing her lips as if in thought to tease him, “Perseus fits you well. He slayed Medusa, founded an ancient city, and was widely revered as a hero; you slay people’s hopes of winning a million dollars by debunking spooky videos.”  


He can’t help but grin at the tease. “At least I know I’m the better person – morally – in this argument.”  


Alex scoffs. “Bullshit, there’s no way you didn’t google me.”  


“Beyond a cursory Google search, I mean. But now I might’ve changed my mind. How long _did_ it take you to find mine?”  


“Three hours. And two and a half of those were waiting on the librarian to call me back.”  


“It’ll take Ruby three seconds, so you might as well tell me now: is your middle name included in your birth announcement?”  


Alex gives a halfhearted, one-shouldered shrug.  


“If you find it, let me know. I’d like to know what it was originally.” His brows draw down. Her lips twitch as a look of comprehension spreads, blush raking across his cheeks in the firelight.  


“Oh – I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” She flaps a hand at his embarrassment.  


“Don’t sweat it.” Strand hands the whiskey back to Alex, though she doesn’t take a drink. “Scout.”  


“What?”  


“My middle name. My dad let me pick it out, when they were drawing up papers. I’d read _To Kill a Mockingbird_ a hundred times at their house when they took me in as a foster kid.” Strand’s response is to shake his head and chuckle. “What?”  


“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude. It just sounds so… Walt Disney.”  


She’s laughing before she knows it.  


“Fuck you, it’s a cute story.” Strand watches her eyes narrow, as if in thought, before she muses aloud, “Little Orphan Alex. A twenty-first century spin with an uplifting soundtrack featuring Phil Collins and Queen.”  


She’s rewarded with another soft chuckle from Strand. His head lolls to the side a bit, the motion unusual for a man who tenses up when a light breeze hits him or when she puts a comforting hand on his arm. Alex takes a small sip of the liquor and passes it back. Strand eyes the bottle before reaching between them for the cap and twisting it on.  


“To continue our conversation from earlier,” Alex says, “I am especially glad that you came.” He watches her with those careful eyes of his as she continues. “And not just for helping me not drown.” She winces at the poor word choice; her tongue feels thick and heavy from the alcohol. “For – the nightmares. I usually spend my nights clutching a steak knife from my kitchen, worrying over every little sound. Having someone to… be there, it’s nice.”  


Strand places his hand on top of hers where it’s resting on the blanket. His thumb sweeps across the back of her hand, tracing the ridges of her knuckles. Alex turns her hand over and weaves her fingers through his, his thumb still rubbing smooth circles against her skin. The fire at their feet crackles. She watches their hands, hesitation like a weight on her chest, before she throws herself to the flood of words that seem to spill out (that always seem to spill out, whenever Strand is around).  


“You make everything quiet.” Alex glances up, sees those cool eyes watching her, and retreats to the fire – to safety. “Not – I don’t have, like, voices in my head. But the stress of work and the tapes and all of this chaos we’ve created–”  


“Alex,” Strand interrupts. She shakes her head at him.  


“No, I know, let me – what I’m trying to say is that, even though you’re borderline _infuriating_ sometimes with your apophenia defense for everything and you don’t seem to care about this ancient sect that seems to have been stalking you since childhood – you’re important to me. Truly.” She pushes out a breath and meets his steady gaze, and she knows she’s caught (and she knows she has been for a long time, ever since the beginning, really – a small fish in the big, mysterious net that is Richard Strand). “And I know that when we go home and we’re back in the grind of clearing through those tapes that we’ll probably go back to sniping at each other, and before all that starts back up, I want you to know. That I appreciate you, worrying about me, reeling me back in when it gets to be too much. And I want you to know that you matter. To me.”  


“Alex,” Strand says again in that low tone of his.  


“Yes?”  


“Are you going to stop recording?” She blinks up at him, feeling like that metaphorical net just unraveled and she’s been abruptly pushed back out to sea.  


“Oh.” Alex twists to hit stop on the recorder that she set between them earlier. “Right. Sorry.”  


She makes a mental note to make sure Nic knows to cut her slightly tipsy, heartfelt confession from the episode. When she rolls back to her original position, Strand leans up on his elbow to face her, his hand finding hers again.  


Anticipation is a heavy weight on her chest.  


His mouth opens and closes several times, before he seems to settle on what he wants to say.  


“I want you to know that my request isn’t strictly in response to your previous admission, because you do matter to me, you’re possibly the only person who… but if I’m overstepping a boundary, let me know, but I really want to–”  


“Jesus Christ, just kiss me.”  


A chuckle escapes him at her command, but he obeys, electricity racing through him as he presses his lips to hers. Alex runs a hand up his shoulder, over his neck and into his hair, loose without its product. Strand breaks the kiss to tuck a piece of dark hair behind her ear, his lips following to skim a light kiss against her temple, the one she’s sure sports a bruise from smacking it against solid rock. Something shifts inside her chest at the gesture. His fingers ghost over her cheek and down to brush the pad of his thumb against the corner of her mouth, where it curls as she hums her assent to his questioning look.  


Strand leans down to brush his lips across hers, so light that it could hardly be a proper kiss. It sends a pleasant tingle through her, nevertheless. Alex presses up against him, deepening the kiss, wanting more. Her other hand comes around to tug at his shirt until he takes the hint and moves to cover her with the weight of his body, shoving the pack out from beneath her so she lays spread across the blanket underneath him. His knee slips between her legs as he leans up on an elbow and kisses her hungrily.  


A soft groan escapes him when Alex nips at his bottom lip; he shifts against her, hungry with want, as her tongue slips past his lips. He can taste the warm spice of the whiskey on her tongue. A twinge in his arm causes him to pull away to readjust against her.  


“All right?” Alex asks after clearing her throat. She cups his face and draws a thumb across his jawline, tickling the hair there. “We can slow down if you need to.”  


Strand can’t help but huff playfully at her concern. He turns his head to kiss the center of her palm before leaning down to capture her lips again, the kiss going on and on and on. Alex runs a hand down his chest before dipping underneath the hem of his shirt; her fingers skim along his waist, her nails digging into the warm flesh of his back, making Strand’s breath catch, his fingers pressing hard into her waist, desperate with the need of it all. He trails kisses down her jaw and neck, making a noise of frustration when he reaches the sweatshirt’s collar. He starts to push it up her torso, before he glances down for permission.  


“It’s your sweatshirt,” Alex reminds him, teasing as she nips at his jawline.  


“And as much as I love seeing you wear it,” he whispers against her ear, “I’d prefer it off.”  


Alex arches her back and raises her arms, letting him peel off the sweatshirt and tank top she wears underneath, leaving her in her cotton bralette. The clothes land with a muffled thump somewhere to the left, possibly in the dirt, but she can’t be bothered when Strand puts his mouth back to work. He drags open-mouthed kisses down her neck. A shiver runs through her, a combination of the cool night air and the feel of his teeth catching against her collarbone. She reaches back and grabs a handful of his hair, guiding him lower. That breathy chuckle of his skates across her skin. He presses a kiss to the space in between her breasts.  


“Patience,” he says, in that low, rough tone of his. He drags his lips across the swell of one breast and enjoys her huff of frustration. Giving in to her wordless demand, Strand dips down to run his tongue over the thin fabric of her bra, tracing her nipple. He gives her other breast similar attention, his thumb brushing against the hard peak of the other, his touch feather-light, coaxing a whimper from her. His fingers sweep up her back, searching for her bra clasp. Alex giggles and tries to explain how a bralette works, but he’s too impatient to wait, instead pushing the fabric up and over to stretch across her collarbone. He cups her breasts and resumes teasing her, brushing the soft pads of his thumbs across the tight peaks until she squirms, her fingers clenching at him.  


Strand continues his trek, dragging his lips down her stomach, tasting the salt of her sweat, smelling the powdery scent of her fancy, biodegradable soap on her skin, the pine sap from collecting firewood on her hands that drag through his hair. As he moves down, more of the firelight drapes across her, the orange glow highlighting the red splotches on her pale neck.  


His mouth reaches the waistband of her leggings, where he nips at the soft skin of her hips.  


“May I?” he asks.  


Alex swallows. Not trusting her voice, she nods.  


He moves to kneel above her, tugging the leggings down and off. She kicks them off to the side to join the sweatshirt. Strand moves up to kiss her, heady and wet. Alex cups his face in both hands, tilting his neck so she can drag her lips down it, his beard scratching at her cheeks. One large hand presses against the middle of her back, holding her there against him, while his other trails down to tease her over her panties.  


Alex’s head rolls back, her back arching as his thumb makes quick circles against her.  


“Richard,” she whimpers against his throat, her hands fluttering down his sides to grip him tight. Alex feels his grin spread across her temple as he presses a kiss there. Crooking a finger under the fabric, he tugs her underwear down. Cool air rushes over her and she shivers, managing to get one leg free before she pulls him close, too eager to bother with the panties still hooked around one knee.  


“You’re such a tease,” she whines as he sinks down to drape kisses against the soft skin of her inner thigh.  


Strand flashes a grin up at her before dragging his tongue over her. Alex gasps something incoherent, her nails raking over his scalp. He grabs her legs and hikes them over his shoulders before he places another open-mouthed kiss against her. Replacing his tongue with his fingers, he dips two inside of her sex, his thumb circling her clit, increasing the pressure. He crooks his fingers up and strokes her until her back arches, her body going taught as he hits that sweet spot. Alex bites at her lip, muffling her cries.  


“There’s no one within a thirty-mile radius of us,” Strand reminds her, his fingers working her all the while. If there’s an award for multitasking, Alex reminds herself to sign him up for it. Later, of course. “And even if someone hears,” he drawls with that teasing smirk of his, “they’ll just claim it’s something supernatural.” Alex laughs outright at that.  


“Just what every woman wants to hear.”  


Strand smirks at the gentle barb.  


“Let me hear you, Alex,” he says, the rasp of his voice and the scratch of his beard against her thighs sending another wave of pleasant tingles to her core. He slides his fingers out of her and, before she can protest, spreads her open and fucks her with his tongue.  


“Oh, fuck,” Alex curses, breath catching and eyes clenching shut when his thumb resumes that delicious pressure against her. One of her hands flies to grab at the blanket, twisting the fabric in her grip. A moan bubbles up in her throat and she lets it loose, her hips shifting as she tries to chase her orgasm. Strand slides a hand up onto her hips and presses down, forcing her back against the blanket. His tongue works her open, licking at the wet heat of her, setting a torturous pace that makes her thighs clench around his head, holding him down as she hisses out her encouragement for him to keep going. She’s so close, standing right there on the cliff, one foot dangling in the open space.  


Risking a glance down, Alex catches Strand’s gaze as he moves to drag his lips over her clit, worrying at it with deft flicks of his tongue.  


Her orgasm slams into her, taking her by surprise. Her echoing cry pierces the quiet wilderness, though it sounds muffled against the blood pounding in her ears. The real stars above are replaced with metaphorical ones.  


Alex blinks a few times so her vision can adjust.  


He presses a final kiss to her sex and slips his fingers out of her; she shudders with oversensitivity. He sucks his fingers clean and if she were a woman who could pull off consecutive orgasms, she’d have entertained the thought of coming again at the sight. Nevertheless, she delights in the little ripples of pleasure that radiate across her body as Strand skims his lips across it as he makes his way back up to her lips. Alex wraps her arms around his shoulders when he reaches her and coaxes his mouth open, enjoying the taste of herself on him.  


They break apart for breath. A log settles in the fire and a small burst of sparks floats up, the fire crackling in response. He drags his fingertips over her bare arm, knowing her shivers aren’t just from her recent orgasm.  


“Do you think we could move this into your tent?” Strand asks. Alex grins up at him.  


“Why do I always have to be the prepared one?”  


He huffs and rolls his eyes before offering a hand to help her up. Alex takes his hand and stands, then bends and shimmies her panties back up her legs. Straightening up, she has only but a second to catch the gleam in Strand’s eyes before he swings her up into his arms and carries her to the tent. Hunching to step inside, he lays her down on the sleeping pad. He turns to zip the tent flap back up, when a hand reaches out to twist into the loose fabric of his shirt, halting him. Alex hauls him against her for a kiss, her hands drifting over his shoulders to push at his jacket.  


Taking the hint, Strand strips off his jacket and tugs his T-shirt up and over his head, a breath escaping him when Alex runs her hands down his chest to the sweatpants he wears. He rolls off her to kick them away, leaving him in his boxer briefs. Alex slips out of her bralette and wraps her arms around Strand’s shoulders, urging him back on top. She curls a leg around his hip, rocking up against him so she can feel his bare skin against hers, his soft chest hairs sliding through the space between her fingers.  


She nibbles at his bottom lip and he opens up to her, trading greedy kisses, his breath stuttering when her hand slips from his chest to cup and squeeze him through his underwear.  


“Alex,” he growls against her lips, the rough timber of his voice like a live wire to her bones. With the tent flap open, the firelight pours in and when he breaks away to look up at her, the orange glow makes his blue eyes shine. Emboldened, Alex thumbs the head of his cock, enjoying the way his lips part in pleasure.  


“There’s really no way to make this sound sexy,” she says, kissing at his jawline as he strokes his warm hands up her body, the chill of the air no match for the overwhelming heat of him, “but when’s the last time you were tested?”  


“Routine physical three months ago showed me clean,” he answers as he cups her breast, teasing her, his lips trailing across the line of her shoulder.  


“Good,” she says and dips her hand past his waistband to stroke at his cock. He grunts out her name and his touch falters.  


“But if – if you don’t have condoms – then we shouldn’t–” She considers making a joke about how he should've gotten a degree in English with all this stammering but decides against it. Strand’s always liked it best when she’s direct with him, anyway.  


“I’ve got an IUD implant, it’s fine,” she interrupts, shifting underneath him to urge him on.  


Strand nips at the skin where her neck meets her shoulder; he feels the quiver that works its way through her and smirks. His fingers move with determination as he presses the heel of his palm against her panties and circles against her clit, her fingers clenching at his back as she whines. Strand chuckles at her frustration and bites at her neck again, her tight inhale fading to a moan as Alex rolls her hips against him, seeking the pressure she needs.  


He tugs down her underwear, tossing it aside. Before he can start her up again, she pushes at his last clothing particle. He catches her look – tit-for-tat – and sheds his boxer briefs. Reaching down to open her up, he adds one finger and then two, teasing her, tracing his tongue against hers as he works her open.  


“Richard,” she says, impatience lacing her tone, as he eases a third finger into her, her eyes fluttering closed. “Richard, please.” She swallows, body thrumming with need as she squirms.  


“Alex,” he says, and she opens her eyes to meet his hooded gaze, feeling pinned underneath those eyes. Though not in the usual way with him, where she feels like a slide under a microscope, but more like a butterfly, tacked and spread out to be marveled at. He slides his fingers out and grips his cock, moving to press at her entrance. She leans up to meet his kisses, wrapping her legs around his hips, urging him forward.  


He sinks into her with a groan at the feel of her, giving her time to adjust before finally, blessedly moving. She cants her hips up, one hand gripping at his arm while the other clenches at his back, her nails biting at the skin there when he hits that certain spot. Alex’s breath rushes out of her when he snakes a hand down to circle her clit, his heated words of praise lost in the pulse pounding in her ears as she nears her orgasm. His fingers move faster and she feels that prickle of electricity course through her, like the air just before a lightning strike. Her toes curl against him as he sinks his teeth into her shoulder, the sting of it acting as the firesteel to her pleasure, sparking an orgasm that sends her hips stuttering and her skin ablaze.  


Strand groans at the clench of her, his rhythm faltering as she cries out his name, her nails pinpricks of heat against his skin. He follows her with a curse and collapses onto her. Her legs fall from around his hips to the makeshift bed. They lay in a sweaty heap, catching their breath.  


Leaning up on an elbow, Strand pushes the dark hair from Alex’s face, tangling his fingers in the fine hair behind her ear. Alex smiles up at him, the firelight catching at the sweat dotting her forehead, and pulls him down for a soft kiss. He moves to arrange the blankets around them and leans back to zip the tent closed.  


“Someone should go put out the fire,” Alex points out. Strand twists to pointedly sweep his eyes over her and the warm blanket she’s snuggled under.  


“That someone being me, I presume.” Her bare shoulders shrug indifferently, but she can’t help the guilty smile that forms under his stare.  


Alex enjoys her full-body view of a naked Richard Strand lit by firelight as he moves around the camp, collecting her discarded clothing and dousing the campfire.  


She flips back the blankets for him when he returns; he curls up behind her and draws her close, his arms wrapping around her. He drops a kiss to the crown of her head before pressing another to her shoulder. Alex breathes in the woodsmoke that clings to him and begins to drift off.  


“I’m waiting for a thank you,” he grumbles. Even in the dark, she can hear that wry smile of his.  


“Hush,” she says. And so, he does.

\-----

Just after eleven the next morning, Alex and Strand reach the parking lot for the Mount Hísemtuks trailhead, empty save for a familiar green truck. The smell of coffee overwhelms Alex as she climbs in; a metallic thermos sits open in the cupholder up front, _Go Bulldogs!_ written across in red, block letters. She hopes she can coax Brenshaw to make a pot when they get to the ranger station.  


“Y’all hungry?” Brenshaw asks as they turn out of the parking lot and onto the main road. “Doctor Strand, if you’ll reach down just in front of you for that white paper bag, there’s two breakfast scramble sandwiches from Fancy’s.” He drawls out the last word as he motions to a small cooler wedged amongst the backseat’s debris. “And there should be two coffees in that orange Coleman back there, Miz Reagan.”  


“You are a god among insects, Nate Brenshaw. Never let anyone tell you different,” Alex declares as she flips open the cooler lid and hands a coffee forward to Strand before taking one for herself. Brenshaw chuckles.  


“I wouldn’t go that far, now, but you’re welcome.”  


“Yes, thank you,” Strand says from the front seat as he passes back a tinfoil-wrapped sandwich to Alex. “We’ve been drinking what Alex refers to as ‘cowboy coffee’ for the past few days.”  


Brenshaw makes a disgusted face that Alex catches in the rearview mirror. She shrugs indifferently, too busy with her coffee to care about defending her culinary choices.  


“Are y’all gonna have time to stop by your hotel before your flight leaves?”  


“Well,” Alex pauses to swallow the rest of her bite down before continuing, “our check-out time would’ve been at eleven this morning. And we left our luggage in the ranger station, anyway. We’ve had… issues in the past with leaving it unsupervised. So, we’ll probably grab the car and head over to the airport, get out of your hair.”  


Brenshaw waves away her concern.  


“Oh, it’s no trouble, Miz Reagan. I’m very much appreciative of you comin’ up here in the first place. If ya’d like, you can make use of our shower at the station before you head on. The pressure’s weak and the hot water’s finnicky sometimes, but a shower’s a shower.”  


“If you weren’t a married man I would kiss you right now.”  


“That’s very sweet of you, but yes, I am happily taken.” Brenshaw takes a moment to sweep his gaze pointedly over the two of them. His eyes flash with amusement. “And besides, I wouldn’t want you to irritate all those _mosquito bites_ around your neck.”  


Alex restrains herself from lifting a hand to run along the side of her neck.  


“They were rather persistent,” Alex says, playing along.  


Strand, having been deathly quiet, proceeds to chokes on his coffee.

\-----

Traffic is light, given the time of day – just past four o’clock on a Sunday. The skies above are a bruised gray and, before they reach the coastal side streets that lead to Strand’s home in Burien, the clouds give way. Alex watches the rain streak down the taxi’s window as Strand keeps his nose stuck in his phone, sorting through his inbox.  


All too soon, they pull into Strand’s driveway. The big house looms above them, the recent coat of exterior paint almost the same shade as the clouds.  


Strand slips out from the taxi. Alex feels the car rattle as he pulls out his suitcase and closes the trunk. She leans forward to verify the driver has her address when there’s a knock on the window. Strand shuffles to the side as Alex cracks open her door, his shoulders hunched as if that will keep the rain away. That godawful orange backpack hangs from one shoulder.  


“I forgot to ask – would you like to come inside?”  


“Oh,” she says and, after a beat, “sure.”  


The driver pops the trunk again and Alex hands her a tip before scooting out into the rain. Strand already has her backpack strung across his other shoulder and is hauling out her carry-on, which she takes and follows him onto the wide front porch. Inside, the torrential rain is muffled, a soft background noise for the quiet house. Strand dumps their packs in the living room and heads for the dark kitchen as Alex switches on the lights.  


“I forgot to tell you on Wednesday, but I like the new paint.”  


“Ah, thank you. They finished it last weekend,” Strand says as he rummages around in the fridge. “It finally stopped raining long enough for them to work.”  


“I liked the yellow, but I think the gray suits you better.”  


“Ruby’s realtor friend suggested to paint it a cool, neutral tone.” Strand produces a bottle of red and two glasses. Alex lets her chin fall into her hand as she leans against the kitchen island, watching him.  


“So, it has nothing to do with the house next door to that supposedly haunted hospital in Everett that I said looked nice?”  


He glances up at her through his rain-speckled glasses, the slight upturned corner of his lips betraying him.  


“Not at all.”  


“Uh-huh,” she says, grinning as she accepts the wineglass he hands her. Taking a slow sip from his own glass, he rounds the island to stand next to her. He reaches out and brushes a hand over her hair, still sporting a collection of raindrops. His hand drifts to her lower back where it rests, an anchor against her. Alex drinks her wine, enjoying the trail of heat that he leaves on her skin, even through the fabric of her clothes.  


“Are you hungry? I’ve got to make a phone call to my TA, but you can order us some takeout, if you’d like. I should be finished by the time it gets here.”  


“Sure.” Strand leaves his wallet with her and disappears down the far hall. The office door creaks open and shut.  


The woman on the other end of the phone gives her an ETA of an hour and fifteen minutes, given the dinnertime rush. Alex spends ten minutes of it finishing off her glass of wine before she remembers her bags in the living room. Refilling her glass, she digs around in her dry bag for her recorder. Feeling smooth plastic under her fingers, she tugs. The game camera slides out.  


“Shit.” She puts it to the side on the coffee table, intending on finding her recorder, when she remembers the memory card inside the camera. Dropping the dry bag, she opens her laptop and pops the memory card in.

\-----

When Strand returns to the living room, he’s greeted by the smell of pad thai and the sight of Alex glued to her laptop. He leaves her be and ventures into the kitchen for plates. They rattle against the table when he sets them down beside the food.  


“Yeah,” Alex says, as if in reply. Strand glances up at her, but she remains distracted by whatever is on the screen.  


“I didn’t say anything.” His voice seems to pull her away, because her gaze flickers between his face and her screen a few times. Confusion sweeps across her brow.  


“Sorry, I thought – it’s just.” She pauses to click her recorder on. “I uploaded the files from the game camera, which yes, I found out I still have, I emailed Nate for a shipping address to send it back to him tomorrow, but that’s not the – it’s–” Alex cuts herself off to breathe, “–there’s something in the photos.”  


“I wouldn’t be surprised. We saw deer, coyotes, and a few elk out when we were out at night.”  


“No, it’s… something else.” She turns the laptop towards him as he takes a seat beside her on the couch.  


Stretched across the screen is a black and white image of a clearing, the light from the infrared flash lighting up the immediate area. On the edge of the lit area is what must have tripped the sensor: a large, dark object that they can only see a faint outline of.  


Alex clicks to the next photo and the object is closer. A hulking shape, with two spindly legs that taper off, though the underbrush and branches that cut into the shot make it difficult to make anything out. In the final photo, the object is closer, and Strand can make out that whatever it is, it’s nearly nine feet tall. There’s a distortion to the image, though, a gray static that covers most of the object. Near the top of the image, he can see where the light appears to glint off something pale, probably low-hanging branches that are too close to the lens.  


“What do you see?” Alex asks.  


“I see a lens distortion. Or it could be matrixing, how people see faces in photographs of mirror or inside a dark hallway.” She levels a pointed look at him. “Or possibly human contamination, someone out there playing a trick.”  


“Is it my turn to be an asshole and pull out park visitation statistics? Who the hell would be out there dressed like,” her hand waves over the screen, “like this? And know exactly where to go to be photographed?”  


“Brenshaw and Delacroix knew where we would be, they knew our hiking route. Those game cameras have GPS equipped. They could’ve easily donned a spooky costume and gone out. The camera came from that wildlife officer, so he could also be the culprit. And we never met him, so he could be behind it or he could not even exist, and this is all the rangers’ doing. You upload the photos, they get to say they have deniability because it’s not _their_ game camera, but ‘wow aren’t those photos spooky’ and ‘here’s how to visit our park this fall.’”  


“If I saw this advertised on the park’s website, I think I’d steer clear.”  


“No, you wouldn’t,” Strand argues. “You’d be the first one in line, and I’d be second, because you’d be dragging me there.”  


“Okay, you’ve got me there,” Alex says, though he can see that the photos are still troubling her, despite his explanation. Strand leans over and takes her hand where it rests on the keyboard and closes the laptop. He runs his thumb over the smooth skin of her knuckles, at the angry red scratches marring the skin, evidence of their trek through the wilderness. “You might be right.”  


“I might be?” He tries to keep the surprise out of his voice. She leans over and clicks the recorder off.  


“I mean, maybe.” Her hand shifts in his, so her fingertips can trace his palm, tickling the skin there. The sensation dances up his forearm. “I think I need a distraction, though.”  


“What did you have in mind?”  


“You,” she says and leans in for a kiss. He curls a hand around her waist and threads the other through her hair, urging her close so she’s flush against him. Her lips trace along his cheek, where he can feel her smile spread across his skin.  


“That can be arranged.”  


“Good.”

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Smokey the Bear says always put out your campfire, even after sex. Or something like that.  
> And yes this story popped into my head with just the premise of 'Alex and Strand go hiking and have sex in front of a campfire' and I filled in the rest of the blanks. There's no shame in admitting that.
> 
> I've never listened to TANIS, so apologies if any of that isn't correct. I tried to limit Nic in this story because I honestly have no idea what the fuck he gets up to when he's not committing journalistic faux pas (what the fuck, season 3 Nic??). 
> 
> There's a healthy dose of headcanon sprinkling in here: Alex being adopted, Strand being a Scorpio (this one def isn't backed up, since his birthday is probably before summer, but sue me), his middle name being Perseus, Idaho having a sandstone slot canyon, and Alex being bisexual (Alex-deserved-the-hot-Russian 2k16).  
>   
>   
> Terms / allusions:  
>   
>  _Haunted stairs in the woods_ : Nic is referring to a popular r/nosleep post
> 
>  _Bear-muda triangle_ : not really a technical term, but such a campsite involves keeping your sleep area, food storage area, and cooking area within a triangle-like area 200-300 feet apart.  
>   
>  _Gram weenie_ : a slang term for an ultralight backpacker who goes to extreme lengths to shave off every bit of weight they must carry (i.e. hikers who cut the tags off their underwear to reduce those oz's).
> 
>  _AT / MST / PCT_ : Appalachian Trail, Mountains-to-Sea Trail, Pacific Crest Trail
> 
>  _"Nothing beside remains"_ : from Shelley's _Ozymandias_ (one of my favorite poems, tbh)
> 
>  _Nimiipuu_ : meaning "people" or "real people"; also known as the Nez Perce. The story about Hísemtuks is entirely made up (though the word does mean sun/moon). There is a Cherokee legend about the sun/moon but it's... vastly different. 
> 
> _"A god among insects"_ : quote from Magneto from _X2: X-Men United_ , although I believe it also appears in one of the _Uncanny X-Men_ comics.  
>   
>   
>  Thanks for reading!  
> Also I made some of the Strand graphics mentioned in the email segment above, if you want to check them out over on [my tumblr](http://queenbirbs.tumblr.com/tagged/tbtp) (or just want to talk to me about these two kids who are both older than me, but whom I love dearly).


End file.
